Lazer e depressão em idosos: análise destas relações em uma instituição de longa permanência para idosos em Ipatinga-MG

Abstract

The depression has a high incidence among the elderly. This pathology predisposes to other diseases and difficulties in treating them. Whereas the elderly have available time for leisure experiences and considering that such experiences may interfere with their wellness and consequently that experiences may interfere with their levels of depression and quality of life it‟s important to research such hypotheses. This study aimed to investigate whether the leisure experiences interfer with symptoms and tendency to depression of elderly who lives in long term care institutions (LTCI); to investigate whether such experiences can be used as preventive and treatment choices of this disease and also to examine the professionals' perception of LTCI on the benefits, advantages and disadvantages of leisure experiences for those elderly, and for the LTCI. Participated in this study 15 older adults (12 women and 3 men) who was living in a LTCI of Ipatinga city in Minas Gerais, Brazil, for 6,33±4,71 years and were 73.30±11.57 years old, and 11 employees (10 women and 1 man) who was working in this same LTCI for 6,60±7,34 years and were 42,61±13,67 years old. During the research was used the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), questionnaire to survey the volunteers profile and semi-structured interviews to investigate the subjective perception of employees regarding the advantages and disadvantages of this proposal. An intervention was performed in LTCI twice a week, for one month, to stimulate leisure experiences, that consisted by the creation of a playroom, a virtual room. Books and toys were provided for the elderly uses whenever and wherever they wished. For analysis of the changes in symptoms of depression, the volunteers answered the GDS before and after the intervention period. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 10.0 for Windows, Shapiro Wilk test was used for normality test and "t" Student test was used for variance analysis, considering α = 5% (p≤0.05). The results have indicated a difference (p=0.014) of 1.47 points in the GDS that decreased from 6.27±2.87 to 4.80±2.57 points after the intervention. The reduction in score caused changes on elderly classification in the level of depression. Before the intervention 1 volunteer (6.7%) presented symptoms of severe depression, 8 volunteers (53.3%) showed signs of mild depression and 6 (40.0%) had normal result. After the intervention, 8 volunteers (53.3%) had normal results, while the other 7 (46.7%) showed signs of mild depression. None of the employees surveyed perceive a negative aspects in the proposed activities, they observed only benefits such as increased happiness, more options of distraction, reduced aggressiveness, increased interaction with visitors and employees and the spontaneous practice by elderly who interact too little or who don‟t leave the room. Although we can not say that the leisure experiences were responsible for the decrease in elderly‟s symptoms of depression, there is evidences of their contribution, especially the perception of employees that relate to greater improvement in mood and happiness of the elderly because the activities proposals. Thus the increase of leisure opportunities in the LTCI may be an easy and low cost strategy to improve the wellness and quality of life for older adults.