Personal health assessment, help-seeking behavior and degree of family support on elderly

Abstract

The study was conducted to find out the way elderly assess their health, ways of seeking help in their health related problems and degree of family support. Fifty (50) elderly from Brgy. Tiolas, San Joaquin, Iloilo ages 60-80 years old and living with their families at the time of the study participated. The instruments used in measuring the variables were the Health Orientation Scale by William Snell (1996), Help-seeking Behavior Questionnaire, and Degree of Family Support Scale. Results showed that elderly do tend to assess their health with less strict standard. Generally, elderly rate their health status as average. Both formal (seeking the help of professionals) and informal (relying on family members, friends and neighbors) ways of seeking help were found to be the ways elderly used in solving their health-related problems. As previous studies shown that family serves as the primary support system on elderly, respondents in this study indicated that they received more intangible form of support (moral and emotional) from their family members than tangible form (financial).