Quality of Life in the Face of Depression among Older People: A Cross-sectional Study in Brazil and Portugal

Objective: to analyze the association of depression levels with aspects of Quality of Life (QoL) in elderly users of Primary Health Care (PHC) in Brazil and Portugal. Methods: cross-sectional study, carried out with elderly people from PHC in Brazil and Portugal, between 2017 and 2018. We obtained a non-random sample of participants and selected for convenience. The Medical Outcomes Short-Form Health QoL (SF-36) instruments were used to measure QOL and the Beck Inventory to assess depression. We regrouped the variables of depression levels into “Absent/Mild” and “Moderate/Severe” and tested the crossing between them and the categorical variables of QOL “Better QoL” and “Worse QoL. Results: the total sample consisted of 150 participants (Brazil n= 100 and Portugal n= 50). In the association analysis between the variables of each group (Brazil and Portugal), we identified, in the Absent/Mild depression subcategory (n=129), the prediction for Better QoL in Portugal in the Functional Aspect domains (p-value =0.027/OR= 2.768), Physical Aspect (p-value <0.001/OR= 5.864) and in the Physical Health dimension (p-value=0.002/OR= 3.752). The binary logistic regression analysis highlighted the Physical Aspect domain, with R²=0.165 (p-value <0.001) and the Physical Health dimension, with R²=0.109 (p-value= 0.002). Conclusions: we concluded that there was an association between better assessments of physical and functional aspects of QoL with lower levels of depression, in which those related to physical health and functionality stood out. Portugal presented better QOL assessments compared to Brazil.