The Reality of Institutionalized Elders Considering Relatives' Visit: A Quantitative Study

• Autor(a) principal: Faria, Aline Cristina de
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Antonio, Sandra Aparecida Emidio, Ebisui, Cássia Tiêmi Nagasawa
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira Multidisciplinar
• Texto Completo: http://revistarebram.com/index.php/revistauniara/article/view/32
• topic: Elder; Long stay institution for elders; Institutionalization; Family.; Idoso; Instituição de longa permanência para idosos; Institucionalização; Família

Ageing for the individual consists of the gradual loss of his/her social roles and the emptiness experienced by not finding new roles. These feelings can lead to psychic suffering especially when there are failures in family integration. This quantitative study aimed at identifying the number of institutionalized elderly receiving visits, as well as their frequency and the link of the visitors, in a municipality in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. Data were collected by asking the 47 (100%) institutionalized elderly to answer a structured questionnaire containing questions of interest to the study. The results show that among the interviewed elderly, 64% received visits; considering the frequency of these visits , 26% said that received visits in the period exceeding 1 month. The findings reveal that 63% of the visitors were other relatives (brothers, grandchildren and nephews,cousins and friends), among them, 47% had children who didn't visit their parents. We concluded that the most relevant finding in this study, in addition to the corroboration of the multiplicity of these losses in the history of life of institutionalized elderly, was the sense of abandonment, inherent in all these elderly people, by their sons, daughters and other relatives, as well as by society in general, showing the need to value this emerging population both in governmental instances as well as in their families.