The elderly at home: A longitudinal study

The 20th century has been a major change in the age structure in most countries of the western world. Due to improved medical care the consequent decrease in mortality rates has resulted in and increase in the population in general, and in the aged in particular. The recent unprecedented interest in the health and welfare of the elderly at home is due in part to the realization that the medical and social care of elderly unfit people will continue to make ever-increasing demands on our resources of money, time and professional skill. The present work reports on a survey (1969-1971) and its follow-up three years later (1972-1974) of 300 elderly people aged sixty-five years and over, living in their own homes. It was intended that this investigation would complement and supplement information from previous studies; that this survey would provide details of the psychiatric tests and that the follow-up survey would indicate which characteristics of the subjects at first survey were associated with mortality within a three year period. Six general practices were chosen at random from two adjacent postal areas in Glasgow which were in socio-economic contrast to each other. From the lists maitained by the Executive Council, Glasgow of names and addresses of elderly National Health Service patients, a stratified random sample was drawn at three monthly intervals until 300 subjects had co-operated in the survey. Medical, psychiatric and social histories were taken during semi-structured interviews conducted by the author in the subjects own homes and complete physical examinations and assessments of nutritional intake status were made in the course of the parent survey by survey colleagues. The author's psychistric assessment of each of the 300 subjects was made in the consideration of all available data. This data was manually analysed. The semi-structured interview technique was used in the collection of data in the follow-up survey. The data from this part of the study wa