Publication:

Quality of life and low self-esteem: an alarming phase among elderly

Background Old age or elderly is the final stage of the normal life span. The elderly population is facing many health problems such as physical, mental, psychological and social etc. Factors like loneliness, low self-esteem, social isolation, quality of life and several others negatively affect elderly population and increase the risk of various health problems in elderly people.

Methods A cross sectional study was conducted, in which 200 elderly from Sirmour participated and the subjects were selected using total enumeration sampling technique. For the data collection the Semi-structured interview schedule, WHO brief-26 QoL assessment scale and Rosenberg self-esteem scale (10-items) were used and data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS version-23.

Results Present study shows that religion, education, occupation, monthly income have a very strong significant association at 0.05 level of significance with WHO bref-26 scale. Rosenberg self-esteem scale shows 165 (81.7%) of elderly have high self-esteem whereas 35 (17.3%) of them have low self-esteem. And no significant association was found between the self-esteem and demographic variable.

Conclusions Indicates that levels of QoL between elderly are moderate and many demographic, social and health factors are correlated with QoL. Also, no significant association was found between Rosenberg self-esteem scale with demographic variable.