Factors associated with risk of depressive symptoms in oldest old people: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

With aging, there are biopsychosocial changes in the body and it is estimated that long-lived elderly people are more likely to develop or worsen depressive symptoms, due to sociodemographic and clinical factors. Objective: To assess the risk of depression and associated factors in elderly people over 80 years of age. Method: This is cross-sectional, descriptive, and quantitative research. Older people over 80 years old, belonging to the previously collected database of the CNPq Research Group on Functional and Multiprofessional Approach in Gerontology, participated in the study. Participants underwent a single assessment and the following instruments were applied: an Anamnesis form, containing clinical and sociodemographic data (age, gender, education, use of total medications, use of psychotropic medications, presence of morbidities, diagnosis of diabetes, diagnosis of systolic arterial hypertension and body mass index); the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE); the Verbal Fluency Test; the Clock Design Test and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). For data analysis, a significance level of ± = 0.05 will be adopted, in addition to the SPSS software (22.0) to perform the statistical tests. Pearson's correlation test will be used and, for variables with significant association with depressive symptoms (correlation coefficient - re0.30, p<0.05), the simple linear regression test will be applied. Expected results: We seek to relate the risk of depression to the oldest old and sociodemographic and clinical factors, especially cognition, gender, education, and the presence of comorbidities.(AU)