QUALITY OF LIFE AND STATUS OF MORBIDITY IN GERIATRIC POPULATION IN A RURAL AREA

All the aspects of "health status", "life style", "life satisfaction", "mental state" or "wellbeing" together reflect the multi-dimensional nature of 'Quality of Life' in an individual. Geriatric health problems relating to the quality of life often remains neglected. They demonstrate higher rates of morbidity, mortality, hospitalizations and experience a poorer quality of life. Hence, this study was conducted to explore the different domains of Quality of Life affected by socio demographic factors and to assess the status of morbidity in the elderly. A cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted on all the elderly who visited the PHC (Mundakur), field practice area of K.S. Hegde Medical Academy. All the elderly above the age of 60 years irrespective of sex were included and WHO BREF on Quality of life was administered to them by the first author in person. The basic demographic data along with their morbid and co-morbid conditions were asked for and the details were collected after obtaining informed consent. The data was tabulated and analysed using the statistical package of SPSS 17.0 version. Independent t-test was applied to compare the mean scores of different variables and the domains. The distribution of participants in this study were as follows: 55% were males while 45% were females. 75% of the participants belonged to the age group of 60-69 years, 25% of the participants were 70 years and above. 66.66% of the individuals were married and 33.34% were either unmarried or widowed. Illiterates were 21.6%, literates were 78.4%. Males & literates had a slightly better quality of life than females and illiterates. With increasing age, the quality of life decreases. Married people had a slightly better quality life than those who were widowed / single. The most common morbidities were found to be vision impairment, hypertension & arthritis.