The Relationship Between Depression, Perceived Stress and Social Support with Quality of Life in Elderly with Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease as the most common type of dementia, accompanied by at the start with gradual and steady progressthat gradually memory and affected other mental abilities such as thinking, reasoning, and judgment of the person and Faced them in daily tasks of life especially in aging stage with the problem. In this respect what is more affected is the quality of life in elderly people.Thereforethis researchperformed with purpose of investigating the relationship between depression, perceived stress and social support with quality of life in elderly with Alzheimer's disease. The study was correlational descriptive andstatistical population consists of elderly patients with Alzheimer's disease in Kermanshah in 2015, that 50 of them were entered to the study by convenience sampling method. Data collection tools in this study include Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961), Holmes-Rahe stress scale (Holmes & Rahe, 1967), social support scale (Procidano & Heller, 1983) and Quality of life in Alzheimer's disease (QOL-AD., Logsdon, Gibbons, McCurry, & Teri, 1998). Results showed that there is a significant negative relationship between perceived stress and depression with quality of life of elderly patients with Alzheimer's disease (p<0.001).Also the results of entered regression analysis showed that perceived stress significantly predicted quality of life of elderly with Alzheimer’s disease (p<0.001). Present study showed the importance of determining factors of quality of life in elderly such as perceived stress and depression.