Health statusof elderly in Thai society

Abstract

This research is cross- sectional research. The objective is to study the quality of life. Mental health status and activities of daily living among Thai elderly. The sample consisted of 3,600 people selected by multi-stage random sampling from the elderly aged over 60 years. Instruments are version of world Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL - BREF) included the 26-item, mental health indicators of the Department of Mental Health Ministry of Public Health and Activities of Daily Living (ADL) of Department of Health, Ministry of Public Health. Cronbach alpha for reliability included 0.81, 0.87, 0.85 respectively. The statistics used for data analysis were frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation.

            The results showed that most of the elderly have an underlying disease Hypertension 38.2%, 48.1 % of the quality of life at a moderate level. Considering each aspect of quality of life, Good quality of life, including the environment, had the highest values of 45.0 %. Divided by gender, both males and female have a moderate quality of life 50.2%, 46.8%respectively.For mental health status found that the elderly had lower mental health status than the standard 53.3 %, divided by gender, both males and female had mental health status lower than the standard level of 58.0 %,50.5% respectively. Divided by age range the ages of 60-69 years of mental health is lower than the standard level 51.0%. Divided by ADL scores, the home bound had lower mental health than the standard level 75.0%. In ADL dimension, 98.6% of samples were social bound. The results of this study can be used as planning data for care provision, promoting the health of the elderly to help they have a better quality of life and provide health education institution develop a curriculum to appropriate and correspond to the needs of the elderly in the aging society.