Miedo a la muerte y depresión en adultos mayores de un club ocupacional de la ciudad de Cuenca, 2023

Abstract

Elderliness represents a crisis or transition in the life cycle, marked by emotional states that elicit negative responses due to the proximity of death. These responses may manifest as feelings of sadness, indifference, or a lack of interest in activities that used to bring older adult’s joy. These emotional effects can cause feelings of depression that influence their life quality. Therefore, the goal of this research is to determine the relationship between fear of death and depression in older adults from an occupational elderly club in the city of Cuenca in 2023. This study has a quantitative and non-experimental approach as a start point, with a correlational scope. The target population of this study comprises 56 older people, 14 males and 42 females, categorized into two stages of old age: functional old age between 65-74 years old (n = 31) and full old age between 75-80 years old (n = 25). The instruments employed in this research included the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale (α=0.79), and the Geriatric Depression Scale developed by Yesavage (α=0.71). The results showed that there is a weak and statistically significant positive relationship between the two variables under investigation, that is, the greater the fear of death, the greater the possibility of the presence of depression; furthermore, within the Fear of Death and the Process of Dying of Self subscales, a strong positive correlation with depression was found. Similarly, it became evident that the sociodemographic context does not represent a significant influence on these variables, as when the variables were analyzed together, they were not observed as correlation significant.