Personalità e invecchiamento: uno studio di confronto tra gruppi di anziani “geriatrici istituzionalizzati” e “geriatrici psichiatrici”.

OBJECTIVE:many factors determine the style and the quality of ageing, including the healthy or pathological personality expressed in life (Stevenson et al., 2003; Van Alphen et al., 2006; Ayotte et al, 2009; Magoteaux, et al., 2009 Oltmanns & Balsis, 2011; Gutiérrez et al., 2012; Debast et al., 2014). This research aims to study the quality and the style of ageing in relation to the pathological personality expressed in life: Is the chronic psychiatric syndrome a negative factor for the style and the quality of ageing? Which aspects of ageing are affected by the mental illness? DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: We have tested 51 geriatric persons (33 Female e 18 Male, between ages 58 and 97, 80 and D.S. = 8,88) that are resident in nursing homes of the territory of Ancona. These people were divided into three groups (two experimental groups and one group of control): the institutionalized psychiatric subjects (P.I, N = 12), the institutionalized geriatric subjects (G.I, N = 19), and the no-institutionalized geriatric subjects (G.N.I, N = 20). STUDY DESIGN: the study is a new design. The purpose is to evaluate in the two experimental samples compared to the control group some specific trends in cognitive affective relational and behavioral areas, in order to capture specific differences between and within groups. METHODS: all subjects underwent to assessment with the same tests: MMSE (Folstein et al., 1975) and the semantic definition task (Belacchi, Benelli, 2014) (cognitive area); NPI-UCLA (Cummings et al., 1994), GDS (Yesavage et al., 1983), Cornell Scale (Alexopoulos et al., 1988) (affective areas and psychiatric symptoms); Vineland-II- Survey Form (Balboni, Belacchi, Bonichini, Coscarelli, 2016) (behavioral and social relational areas). It was used the statistical package SPSS 22,0 - Andy Field (2009), for analysis of scores, for correlations and comparison between groups. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: the psychiatric group is institutionalized at a young age and presents from a moderate to severe cognitive impairment; this group presents more severe and frequent psychiatric symptoms and worst performance respect the other groups in all the areas. The geriatric group is institutionalized in later life and presents from a moderate to severe cognitive impairment; this group presents a milder form of late onset psychiatric symptoms that correlate with some specific residual adaptation skills. The control group, which are not institutionalized, have the best performance respect the other two groups and they don't have relevant psychiatric symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: in our research it shows that subjects with early onset psychiatric disorder have worse performance in all areas and a cognitive decline in a younger age respect geriatric and control groups.