Abstract :
Introduction: Recent advancements in medical sciences have increased the longevity of life, which in turn has increased the geriatric problems and dependency on society. This study aimed towards assessing the burden of dependency of elderly also to find out association of dependency with socio-demographic variables.
Methodology: A cross sectional community based study was carried out among 246 elderly subjects from a slum area in Nagpur. House to house survey was conducted. Katz and Lawton scales for activities of daily living (ADL) and Instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) respectively were used to find out dependency among the subjects.
Results: Prevalence of dependency was found to be 27.03% and 33.3% depending on ADL and IADL scales respectively. ADL was associated with increasing age, male gender and unemployment/retirement, whereas IADL was associated with increasing age.
Conclusion: More than one fourth of elderly population is dependent on others for the basic activities of daily living and one third of them are dependent for instrumental activities of daily living.
Keyword :
Gerontology, Geriatric Medicine, Geriatric Dependency, ADL, IADL