Desempenho cognitivo de idosos atendidos pelo programa Estrat?gia da Sa?de da Fam?lia (ESF)

• Autor(a) principal: Esteves, Cristiane Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_RS
• Texto Completo: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/803
• topic: PSICOLOGIA CL?NICA; PSICOLOGIA COGNITIVA; IDOSOS; DEPRESS?O; MEM?RIA; FUN??O EXECUTIVA; CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA

Introduction: It is expected that the normal aging process is followed by the natural decline of abilities both cognitive and physical, however, not sufficient to cause damage in the everyday life nor compromise the functionality of the individual. Objectives: The present study originated two articles, each one with its proposal. The article 1 had the general goal to evaluate the cognitive performance of elderly people in the city of Porto Alegre, analyzing the cognitive abilities related with the executive functions: verbal fluency, language and verbal episodic memory (immediate recall, delayed and recognition). Besides, were analysed the possible influence of the sociodemographic variables in the result. The article 2 had the goal to estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the studied sample and analyze the association between depressive symptoms in old age and cognitive functioning. To do so, there were made comparisons between the cognitive performance of elderly people with and without depressive symptoms. Methods: Both studies had quantitative crosssectional design, with the participation of a total of 306 seniors, with the ages between 60 and 79. The data collection was realized in the Institute of Geriatrics and Gerontology of PUCRS. All the participants filled the Commitment Term of Consent, the Socio-demographic data sheet, the Mini- Mental State Examination, the Word List of the Cognitive Battery CERAD, the Wechsler Logical Memory Test, the Boston Naming Test, the Phonemic Verbal Fluency, the Verbal Fluency Category Animals and Geriatric Depression Scale - short version. Results: The article 1 showed that younger seniors (60 to 69 years old) showed better performance in the tasks that evaluated their verbal episodic memory (immediate recall, delayed and recognition), verbal fluency (phonemic) and language (naming) in comparison to elderly seniors (70 to 79 years old). The article 2 showed a prevalence between the presence of depressive symptoms of 29,41% among the evaluated seniors. The results showed association between depressive symptoms and performance in cognitive tasks. However, it was observed that the gravity of the depressive symptoms seems not to change the performance in cognitive tasks, but the presence of symptoms. Conclusions: The study showed that elderly patients with younger age (60-69 years) performed better on tasks of verbal episodic memory (immediate recall, delayed and recognition), language and executive functions of phonemic verbal fluency. It was also observed that the presence of depressive symptoms were associated with poorer performance on tasks of verbal episodic memory (immediate recall and delayed), and executive functions of phonemic verbal fluency. Furthermore, we observed that the intensity of depressive symptoms did not affect significantly the cognitive performance of elderly, but the presence of depressive symptoms. Thus, we can conclude that both age and the presence of depressive symptoms in the elderly may contribute to impaired cognitive performance