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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Disability symptoms and the price of self-sufficiency | | Author(s) | Lois M Verbrugge, Purvi Sevak |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging and Health, vol 16, no 5, November 2004 |
| Pages | pp 688-722 |
| Source | http://www.sagepub.com |
| Keywords | Physical disabilities ; Symptoms ; Independence ; Assistive technology ; Domiciliary services ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Symptoms of disability are tiredness, slowness and pain doing daily tasks made difficult by health. The authors study factors that increase and decrease disability symptoms, especially effects of equipment and personal assistance. In the US National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement Phase 2, people aged 55+ with personal care and household management disabilities were asked about fatigue, taking a long time and pain when doing tasks on their own and with assistance. Poor overall health and disability and severe disability in tasks increase disability chances by 11% to 18%. Assistance users are 19% to 20% less likely to have symptoms than non-users. Personal help, alone, or with equipment, relieves the symptoms better than equipment only, by 9% to 19%. Equipment-only users are self-sufficient, a highly-prized situation. Because they actively engage in tasks, symptoms are still likely. This trade-off of psychological gain with comfort loss may be preferable to personal help. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050202212 A |
| Classmark | BN: CT: C3: M: N: 3J: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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