DEPRESSION LEVEL AND THE IMPACT ON THE NUTRITIONAL CONDITION ON ELDERLY PATIENTS

Introduction: elderly population is a group who present several problems in relation to the nutritional condition . Aging is a natural process trough the cycle of life , however not all humans go old in the same way, the quality of life and the independency is related with the opportunities that the person had trough infance and adolescents years, education, lifestyle, and health also have an important role. Depression is very common on elderly Etiology of depression has many causes among retirament, death of a member of the family, loneliness, and cognitive impairment who comes with the proccess of aging. Objective: determinate level of depression and the impact on the nutritional condition of elderly patients from a healthcare unit. Methods: observational,descriptive, prospective,analitic, non probablistic of consecutibeselectionstudy. Two scales were used Mini Nutritional Assesment that evaluates the nutritional condition and the Yesavage Scale for depression. Results: 15,6% present normal nutritional condition. 48,5% malnutritionrisk. 35,9% malnutrition. 42,2% has proteic energetic waste and 50% of those are male. 6,3% does not have depression. 64,1% has mild depression. 29,6% has severe depression. Conclussion: there is an inverse relation between the nutritional condition and the level of depression The higher the nutriotional condition is the lower level of depression exist. And equally with de proteic energetic reserves the more high is the reserve the lower level of depression appear. Is important to identify the signs of depression as soon as their appear and to treat the improving the quality of life and health condition on elderly population to avoid health problems related.