Resilience and functional capacity of elderly people with diabetes mellitus

Objective: to correlate the resilience and functional capacity of the elderly people with diabetes mellitus. Methods: this is an exploratory, descriptive and cross-sectional study, conducted with 96 elderly patients hospitalized for complications of diabetes mellitus in a university hospital. Data collection was performed through an interview, using a semi-structured instrument called the Resilience Scale and the Barthel Index. Results: most of the elderly people had moderate resilience (57.3%) and functional dependence (85.4%), with a mild (30.2%) and moderate (26.0%) prevalence. A positive correlation was observed with statistical significance between resilience and functional capacity, so the increase of one variable is correlated with the elevation of the other. Conclusion: when correlating resilience with the functional capacity of the elderly person, a positive and proportional relationship was observed between these variables highlighting the functional capacity as an important instrument for the development of resilience in the elderly person with diabetes.