Influência dos sintomas depressivos na mobilidade de idosas comunitárias

Abstract

Depression is considered a multifactorial mood and affective disorder of origin, playing an important role in functional limitations during aging. The functional capacity is important for the individual to remain with independence and autonomy thus presenting an adequate quality of life, according to the function of his body, execution of tasks and situations of his daily life. The overall objective of this study was to compare functional capacity among community elders with positive screening and negative screening for depression. Thus, the specific objective of the study was to evaluate the elderly in the presence of depressive symptoms and to evaluate the functional capacity. This is a crosssectional observational study with a sample of 449 elderly women in the community with a mean age of 70.7 years (SD = 4.7). The functional capacity was assessed by means of gait speed tests and sit and stand test of the chair by five times. Depressive symptoms were evaluated by the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The results showed a significant difference in the performance ofthe chair sit and stand test five times (p <0.001). Thus, elderly women with positive screening for depression had a lower performance on the sit and stand test when compared to elderly women with negative screening for depression.