Regular Research ArticlesAffective Correlates of Fear of Falling in Elderly Persons
Section snippets
Subjects
The study group consisted of a convenience sample of men and women age 60 years or older admitted to medical or orthopedic wards of three hospitals affiliated with the University of Toronto. Subjects were not necessarily admitted to hospital because of a fall, but they must have experienced one or more falls in the previous 12 months to be included in the study. A history of falls was determined by interviewing the patient and reviewing the patient's hospital chart. A fall was defined as
Subjects
A group of 1,049 persons age 60 years or older were screened over a 14-month period; 246 of these persons were known to have experienced one or more falls during the previous 12 months; 665 persons did not have a history of falls in the previous 12 months; and falls history could not be determined in 138 individuals. Of the people who had fallen, 25 were discharged from the hospital before their eligibility for the study could be fully assessed; of the remainder, 137 were eligible for the
DISCUSSION
This is the first study to examine the association of depressive and anxiety disorders with fear of falling. Although other studies reported statistically significant associations between fear of falling and scores on self-rated depression and anxiety screening instruments, they did not examine the clinical relevance of the findings. As a corollary, we have not known whether clinically significant depression or anxiety is associated with fear of falling independently of other variables
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Associations between fear of falling and activity restriction and late life depression in the elderly population: Findings from the Irish longitudinal study on ageing (TILDA)
2021, Journal of Psychosomatic ResearchCitation Excerpt :This suggests that other factors may potentially pay a role in FOF and fear-related Activity Restriction (AR). Over the recent years, numerous studies have reported on the association between FOF, AR and psychological as well as psychiatric disabilities [5,9,10]. Notably, these studies showed that Late-life Depression (LLD) was strongly associated with the fear of falling [5,9].
Understanding the aetiology of fear of falling from the perspective of a fear-avoidance model – A narrative review
2020, Clinical Psychology ReviewPredictors of Incident Fear of Falling in Community-Dwelling Older Adults
2020, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association
The authors thank Danita Pitters and Jeffrey Muller for their assistance with this research, Dr. David Streiner for statistical advice, and Drs. Shabbir Alibhai and Barry Goldlist for their contributions.
This work was supported by grants from the Drummond Foundation and the Department of Psychiatry, University Health Network, a fellowship award from the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (Dr. Gagnon), and, in part, by the Mary Trimmer Chair in Geriatric Medicine Research (Dr. Naglie) and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Senior Investigator Award (Dr. Devins).