A velhice: olhares das pessoas idosas e seus familiares

Abstract

This research approaches to aging from the analysis of the narratives of the elderly and their relatives. An exploratory, descriptive and qualitative approach has been carried out as the research design. The purpose of this study was to understand how the elderly person and their families perceive the aging and how it impacts their quality of life and family relations. For the data collection, we conducted free interviews, obtaining the narratives of the relatives from three guiding questions. With the elderly person, besides two generative questions of narratives, we used an activity with key expressions where they discussed the units of analysis, selected a priori from readings in publications about aging. Through these narratives we can comprehend the phenomenon from the perspective of the elderlies and their relatives. The participants' selection was by criterion of accessibility and convenience, being aged from at least seventy-five years, without any distinction of gender, educational level, ethnicity or socioeconomic status. They were required to have the cognitive conditions to understand the study's propositions, and to discuss their narrative coherently. We used as data analysis method, Content Analysis, which revealed the following dimensions: perception about aging; quality of life in old age; family relationships in old age. The elderlies and their families perceived aging as a "natural process," and diseases that affected mobility and the occurrence of pain were considered typical of aging. Aging has impacted older people's satisfaction with their daily lives. The factors that influenced the quality of life were: physical health, level of independence, being able to decide and to control their life, possibility to perform physical and leisure activities. There was no prejudice on family relationships in old age, being considered that this is a period of approximation of family members. Also were discussed the units of analysis highlighting: body, family relationships, socialization, losses and invisibility of old age. It is important to emphasize that the research did not result from homogeneous discourses. On the contrary, when we investigated the perception of the elderlies and their families, we face a diversity of narratives worthy of further study.