دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی افسردگی و کیفیت زندگی در افراد مسن: اثرات میانجی گری کیفیت خواب - الزویر 2018

Abstract

Background/Objective: Sleep insufficiency, which affects more than 45% of the world’s population, has a great importance when considering older adults. Thus, this research tested a mediation hypothesis, through a path analysis, which explains how depression relates to the quality of life considering the effects of sleep quality in older adults. Method: A sample of 187 community-dwelling Portuguese older adults answered questionnaires about sociodemographic status (age, gender, highest level of education completed, family status, sports activities, health, and retirement status), quality of life, sleep quality, and depression. Descriptive and path analysis statistics were performed considering the results of the normality test. Results: The sample has health characteristics and presents adequate sleep duration. Sleep quality acted as a mediator between depression and the quality of life in older adults, considering the variation of gender and health. This suggests that it is important to establish self-care practices, namely sleep quality, to intervene in the ageing process. Conclusions: It is important to consider sleep quality associated with depression for older adults and to test interventions to minimize health impacts. Also, more researches are needed about the primary prevention in sleep quality relating to depression.

Discussion

The present study aimed to confirm whether sleep quality mediated the relationship between depression and the quality of life of Portuguese older adults. The age range of the sample used in the present study introduces some important criteria due to the fact that the participants had autonomy to perform their daily activities. This criterion differs from other studies where the lack of autonomy was considered (Mory´s, Pachalska, ˛ Bellwon, & Gruchała, 2016). This study intended to evaluate a non-clinical sample and the strategy followed was to collect the sample within senior universities. The goal was to have participants who had a more active life and were in better health. A clinical sample or institutionalized individuals would have many more variables that would influence the results. Therefore, the use of a non-clinical sample allowed us to develop a different look for the proposed goal of this study. The guidelines followed are based on proposal of the WHO (2015), meaning that it is necessary to transcend the outdated ways of thinking about ageing. Thus, this study attempted to address ‘‘health’’ - not just ‘‘diseases’’ - to develop fundamental health research on ageing. As such, these results follow the effort to understand the functioning of older adults within a health perspective.

Researches focusing on healthy elderly adults have found that the studies that used objective sleep measures (e.g., polysomnography) showed a poorer sleep quality than results from subjective measures (Maglione et al., 2012). However, this difference also occurred when sleep was associated with depressive symptoms (Maglione et al., 2012). This divergence using objective versus subjective measures can be explained by the multifactorial structure of the sleep dysfunction construct, which causes confusion in diagnosis with respect to determining which individuals need a deeper investigation of the etiology of their complaints (Mollayeva et al., 2016). This characterizes a challenge in primary and specialized medical care.