|
|
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
| SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE | ||
Want to support Global Action on Aging? Click below: Thanks!
|
 |
Elderly Pain Complaints Tied More Closely To Life
Satisfaction Than Health By Susan R. Farrer, Contributing Writer Health Behavior News Service March 11, 2003 How much an elderly person complains about pain, gastric symptoms and
other body problems may be tied more to overall well-being and life
satisfaction than to actual physical health, says new research published
in the journal Psychosomatics. A German team of
psychosomatic and gerontology researchers assessed 251 general hospital
inpatients' body complaints and how those complaints related to
demographic factors (such as age and marital status), age-related changes,
life satisfaction and doctors' ratings of problems. Body complaints
studied included exhaustion, gastric symptoms, pain, cardiovascular
complaints and other symptoms. The patients' average
age was 75 years, and more than two-thirds (68.1 percent) of the patients
were women. "Because
subjective body complaints and medically unexplained symptoms are
associated with substantial distress and frequent health care utilization,
more information is needed about the predictors of these complaints,
particularly in elderly patients," write Gudrun Schneider, M.D., of
the Department of Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at University Hospitals
Münster and co-investigators from the Institute of Gerontology at the
University of Heidelberg and the Haus Berge Geriatric Clinic of St.
Elisabeth-Hospital in Essen, Germany. The researchers found
that only three factors were significantly associated with the elderly
persons' body complaints: self-assessment of life satisfaction;
self-assessment of age-related changes related to activities, cognitive
performance and state of health; and doctors' ratings of somatization -
that is, patients' physical complaints that cannot be explained by a
bodily cause. Age, gender, marital
status, living arrangements and objective health-related variables were
not associated with the level of subjects' body complaints. "Complaints of
psychosomatic symptoms in elderly patients have been receiving increased
attention," Dr. Schneider and colleagues write. "Our results
confirm those of other studies that have shown a correlation between
subjective body complaints, subjective well-being, depressive mood and
psychiatric disorders." However, the
researchers caution that because their study subjects were hospital
inpatients, they might have had lower levels of health and functioning
than other elderly patients would. Therefore, the results might not apply
to elderly persons as a whole. The research was
supported by grants from the German Research Association. Health Behavior News
Service: (202) 387-2829 or www.hbns.org.
Center for the Advancement of Health Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
|
