Representações Sociais de cuidadoras informais de idosos sobre Qualidade de Vida

Abstract

The Quality of Life (QOL) is characterized as the individual's perception of their position in life, focusing on their individual, social, economic needs and life expectancy of individuals to live well and better. With this, the Social Representation of informal caregivers, may suffer the influence of care they provide to the elderly. Whereas the social representations are constructions that aim to drive the formation of a conceptual framework, the question is: what are the social representations of caregivers on their Quality of Life? To answer these questions, this study aims to understand the social representations of informal caregivers of seniors on Quality of Life. This is an exploratory, descriptive study with a qualitative approach, theoretically based Theory of Social Representations, in view of the Structural Approach. Participated in the study, 91 informal caregivers of elderly assisted at the Health Center of Liberty, in São Luis-Ma, aged between 18 and 90 years, with only one carer aged 90. Data were collected from November 2013 to February 2014, through the free evocations of words (TELP) test with the term inductor - "quality of life". The data were processed using the software EVOC2003. The results showed that evocations were grouped according to degree of importance to express the representation of the term Quality of life for caregivers in the context of four houses - Central Core: health, money, food and family, conceived as the essential elements of Representations caregivers; - 1st suburbs: housing, employment, peace and comfort, evoked at a lower frequency; - Area of contrast: layout, sleep well, time for themselves, healthcare and wellness, important for a small group; - 2nd periphery: tranquility, education, leisure, love and rest. Elements of minor importance for the representations of caregivers. Thus, four categories were created to highlight the directions given by the representations of quality of life, namely: quality of life and the essentials; quality of life and social needs and citizenship; quality of life, wellness and health; quality of life and the elements of expression of individual freedom. We conclude that the interaction with the universe of caregivers allowed to know their Social Representations on Quality of Life and the structure of these representations there is a lack of essential elements for good living, so that the mention of the elements, demonstrates the grace period for the quality of life of the caregiver. Observed as needs or desires of caregivers for the conquest of elementary components to your well-being, health and citizenship.