Depression and quality of life in Brazilian and Portuguese community elderly: association and risk analysis
Description
We aimed to analyze the association and risk of depression on aspects of Quality of Life (QL) in elderly users of Primary Health Care (PHC) residing in Brazil and Portugal. This is an observational, cross-sectional, comparative study with a quantitative approach carried out in PHC in Brazil and Portugal, in which we obtained a non-random sample of participants who were 65 years of age or older and consisted of 150 participants (100 Brazilians and 50 Portuguese). For data collection, a questionnaire with sociodemographic and health data, the Medical Outcomes Short-Form Health QoL (SF-36) questionnaire and the Beck Inventory were used. In the analysis of the association between QoL and depression, we observed that most aspects of QoL had a higher median score (> 50.0) within the categorical variables of depression “Absent” and “Mild”. The Emotional role functioning, Physical role functioning, Physical functioning, Mental Health, Total Score and summary measures Mental Health and Physical health domains stood out with this behavior, which in turn, presented correlation values inversely proportional with the Beck Inventory, which indicated lower levels of depression in the face of higher SF-36 scores. In general, their correlation strengths were more relevant in Portugal, where we found that most of them had moderate to strong correlation (⍴> 0.400). Greater risks of depression were observed on the QoL of Portugal when compared to Brazil. Among its most expressive risks was for the worst assessment of QOL (SF-36 < 50.0) in the Physical role functioning (OR= 4.776; 95% CI: 2.41-9.43), Physical functioning (OR= 3.037; 95% CI: 3.037) domains , Vitality (OR= 6,000; 95% CI: 1.56-23.07), Total Score (OR= 3.727; 95% CI: 2.24-6.17) and the Summary Measure Mental Health (OR= 3.870; 95% CI: 2.13-7.02) . Among the aspects, those related to the emotional, physical, functional and mental health components stood out. Both the association, the correlation and the risk of depression were more expressive in Portugal compared to Brazil, although it also presented similar results, but with less relevance.