Health-Related Issues of Users of Social Care Services for Elderly and Their Caregivers: A Cross-Sectional Study in a Day Care Center.

Aim: The aim of this study was to examine two hypotheses: 1) Users of Day Care Center for Elderly (DCCE) would have frail health and multiple age-related care needs, and 2) caregivers would have to deal with some levels of anxiety due to the burden of care, and similar levels of quality of life to the users.

Materials and methods: The current cross-sectional study was carried out at a DCCE of the regional unit of Heraklion, Crete, Greece, between March-April 2022. The study sample comprised 29 DCCE social care services users and 51 caregivers. A short questionnaire sheet was created to record sociodemographic characteristics and general health-related issues. Additionally, the Anxiety Symptom Scale (Short Anxiety Screening Test (SAST)) and the Quality of Life (SF-12) were used to measure anxiety and quality of life of the participants. Comparison analysis was performed to detect differences between the two groups.

Results: The most common morbidities for users of DCCE were hypertension (58.6%), hypercholesterolemia (55.2%), rheumatoid arthritis (24.1%), diabetes (24.1%) and heart disease (41.4%). Users of social care services have significantly higher vaccination rates (influenza: 100%, COVID-19: 100%, herpes zoster: 44.8%, and pneumococcus: 86.2%) than their caregivers. About 75% (yes: 24% and sometimes: 51.8%) of the users and 45% of their caregivers (yes: 7.8%, and sometimes: 37.3%) felt lonely at least sometimes. All participants were found to have low mean levels of the SAST score (18.4, SD:4.9) and 18.7% were on the verge of severe symptoms. Users of social care services were found to have low average levels of quality of life (SF-12), with significantly lower physical health (28.2, SD: 6.6) compared to the Mental health subscale (39.6, SD: 9.3) (p <0.001).

Conclusions: This study highlighted the main health-issues of DCCE users, and that they have low quality of life. Additionally, we found that caregivers faced a few health-issues, and had higher quality of life and lower SAST levels than the users. Therefore, social and health policy providers should consider our findings and assess the users' and caregivers' needs to provide holistic care, thus improving their quality of life.