Elderly's activities of daily living, depressive symptoms and quality of life

Objective: To correlate depressive symptoms with the ability to perform activities of daily living and the quality of life of elderly people living in Nursing Homes. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study, with a sample consisting of 99 elderly people, living in ten public Nursing Homes in the city of Sao Paulo. Data collection used the instruments WHOQOL Bref and Old, Beck Depression Inventory and Katz Index. Data were collected from July 2016 to February 2019 and statistical treatment was performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (R) (SPSS -version 24.0). Results: The elderly have a positive perception of their quality of life correlated with independence for activities of daily living, with statistical significance for sensory functioning (r = .263), physical (r = .200) and psychological (r = .214) domains; and a negative assessment in relation to depressive symptoms in sensory functioning (r = -.438), autonomy (r = -.310), past, present, and future activities (r = -.384), social participation (r = -.368), death and dying (r = -.913), intimacy (r = -.351), physical (r = -.590), psychological (r = -.539), social relationships (r = -.382), and environment (r =-.533) domains. Conclusion: Independent elderly had better scores in sensory functioning, physical and psychological domains. Those with depressive symptoms had worse scores in all quality of life domains.