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Health and functioning among elderly recipients of home help in Norway
Author(s) -
Ranhoff Anette Hylen,
Laake Knut
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
health and social care in the community
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.984
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1365-2524
pISSN - 0966-0410
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2524.1995.tb00012.x
Subject(s) - loneliness , norwegian , medicine , anxiety , gerontology , depression (economics) , activities of daily living , nursing homes , multivariate analysis , psychiatry , nursing , linguistics , philosophy , economics , macroeconomics
We used data on respondents 60 years of age and above ( n = 2111,54% women) from a nationwide Norwegian health survey. In all, 186 (8.8%) of the respondents received home help. The data demonstrate that home help tends to be provided as a supplement to formal care, i.e. home nursing, as well as to informal support from relatives, neighbours and friends. High age, being of female gender and living alone were strongly associated with the provision of home help in bivariate analyses. A negative relationship existed between income and receiving home help, but this association only existed for subjects under 70 years of age. The home help clients, more frequently than those without home help, reported having functional problems, suffering from chronic illnesses, and consulting a doctor due to disease. They also reported poorer self‐perceived health, more frequent symptoms of depression or anxiety, and more frequent loneliness. Multivariate analyses identified age, impaired ability to do housework, living alone, difficulties in using public transportation, poor perceived health and suffering from chronic illnesses or impairments as explanatory variables for being a recipient of home help. The results demonstrate that the home help clients represent a particularly frail group of elderly people.