Association between chronic illnesses and self-perception of Health in elderly people
International Journal of Development Research
Association between chronic illnesses and self-perception of Health in elderly people
Received 20th April, 2018 Received in revised form 06th May, 2018 Accepted 21st June, 2018 Published online 30th July, 2018
Copyright © 2018, Érica Paula Santos Pessoa et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The goal is to examine the connection between chronic illnesses and self-perception of health in elderly people. It is an epidemiological study, census-based with a cross-sectional design and a quantitative approach of descriptive and exploratory nature. The elderly participant of this research were the ones that attended at the Social Assistance Reference Center of Barra do Choça-BA, where there were applied three questionnaires the Mini Mental State Examintion, followed by the Brazilian Old Age Schedule and, at last the questionnaire of non-transmittable chronic illnesses taken from PNAD. Of the 25 elderly people assessed, 67.9% reported having a good health self-perception, and when comparing their recent health with 5 years ago, 64.3% considered their health worse. The presence of chronic illnesses is not a determining factor to provide health negative perception. There are various factors that influence the elderly self-perception of health, but in accordance with this study, there wasn’t association between chronic illnesses and self-perception of health.
