Psychological resilience: protector factor for elderly assisted in ambulatory

INTRODUCTION: Among elderly, psychological resilience is associated with depression, physical health, daily living activities and self-perceived health. OBJECTIVE: To describe the relationships between functionality, depressive symptomatology and resilience between resilient and non resilient groups. METHOD: Descriptive study, 59 patients from the Geriatric Ambulatory/HC Unicamp, age 69-91 years. Instruments: scales of activities of daily living ADL, instrumental activities of daily living IADL, depressive symptoms GDS, Mini-Mental Exam MEEM and resilience. Measurements used were: frequency, position and dispersion, comparisons among categorical variables Chi-square and Fisher Exact, numerical variables Mann-Whitney, Krushal-Wallis, co-relations among variables and linear regression multivariate analysis. RESULTS: Mostly women 80.4%, 70-89 years, income ≤ 2 minimum wage, 43.1% illiterate, 57% showed preserved IADL independence in six or seven items, 43% not preserved partial or total help in at least 2 items, 31.4% showed depressive symptomatology suggestive of depression. The most resilient >66 within 75 scores showed average of 5.2±2.1 IADL, in relation to the least resilient 3.6±2.4; p=0.017. The least resilient showed average of 6.4±4.2 depressive symptoms, the most resilient showed average of 2.6±2.6;p=0.001. Negative co-relation between resilience and depressive symptomatology r=-0.688; p5 depressive symptons tended to show low scores in resilience linear regression multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: Resilience is an important protector factor for elders assisted in ambulatory, with a relative degree of dependency and evidence of depressive symptoms.