General health of elderly: Health conditions in a rural context

Abstract

With the aging phenomenon several issues become the subject of discussion in order to facilitate the quality in the process of aging. And one of them comes to mental health issues, which parallel the physical health, you need to study in order to know how to present this relationship for the elderly considering its context. So here it addresses the overall health of the elderly in rural areas in order to check with which autorrelalatadas variables relates. We interviewed 40 elderly people without dementia, aged 61 to 91 years, and average of 71.25 - + 8.2. In this sample with male predominance (52.5%), for statistical Spearman tests leveraged up the goal when it was found significant relationship with self-reported general health variables. Thus, among these elderly, the greater the amount of disease, medications and punctuation in Geriatric Depression Scale, tends to be worse overall health. Emphasize the strong links between mental and physical health in the elderly rural areas and possibilities of psychology contribute to the overall health care in a multidisciplinary way with psychological instrument composed of highly reliable items.