Background
The average age of population is increasing [
1], primarily due to a marked decrease in mortality rates, resulting in a significant increase in the proportion of individuals aged older than 65 years and, in particular, an increase in individuals who are greater than 85 years old. Concomitantly, family structures are changing, with a trend of having fewer children. Additionally, a growing incidence of chronic disease and functional impairment places increased demands on home-based care services for the older adults [
2,
3]. The provision of home-based care for older citizens is a public service in China that is delivered by social workers and includes provision of care to older adults who live alone, who are unable to care for themselves or who are aged 80 years or older.
Population-based study indicated that 18.3% of older persons suffering from disability [
4]. Disability is linked to adverse health outcomes such as higher healthcare costs, admission to hospital care, reduced quality of life (QOL) and mortality. The effects of disability have been assessed by a multitude of studies, with the Instrument Activities of Daily Living (IADL) and Activities of Daily Living (ADL) to evaluate disability [
5]. However, IADL and ADL reflect limitations on daily living activity. As stated by the World Health Organization (WHO), disability is an umbrella term that considers impairment and limitations in activity and in participation [
6], all of which are associated with a reduction in the QOL of older adults [
7,
8]. A recent systematic review concluded that no study has evaluated the disability through a questionnaire covered all essential dimensions proposed by International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health framework [
9]. Therefore, what we seriously lack is more comprehensive data about disability covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions.
Multi-morbidity was defined as the co-occurrence of two or more chronic conditions in an individual, it often occurs in older adults, with a prevalence ranging from 6.4 to 76.5% among individuals aged 60 years or more [
10]. Most previous studies defined an association between disability and a single chronic disease or various multi-morbidity combinations of chronic disease [
11‐
13]. A positive correlation between multi-morbidity and disability, as defined by ADL/IADL, has been reported [
14], though this study was based on an older adults population aged 80 or older with 2085 individuals. Moreover, having multiple chronic conditions has a significant negative effect on cognitive impairment [
15,
16]. However, it is unknown if multimorbidity impacts adversely upon the more comprehensive disability.
Increasing longevity and changes in traditional family structures imply that the proportion of older individuals receiving home-based care will increase. This population is more likely to be disability and to be affected by chronic disease, health-related behavior and other factors. The aim of this study was to assess the association of inclusive disability characteristics and the potential association between multimorbidity, health-related behavior and disability in older community residents receiving home-based care.
Discussion
Overall, 76.7% of 819 individuals aged 60 years or over reported that they had a disability. Impairment in ADL, mental status, sensory perception, ability to communicate, and social involvement significantly increased the risk of the co-occurrence of other impairment. Age and sedentary behavior was negatively associated with severe disability, with sedentary behavior and not watching TV viewing increasing the likelihood of disability.
Our survey revealed that more than three quarters of older adults receiving home-based care have an impairment in comprehensive ability, with 7% of participants having impairment to the extent that they were fully dependent upon others for basic needs. Less than one quarter of respondents remain in good health and are fully independent. The result is in agreement with results of a study focusing on centenarians in Hainan [
22]. Additionally, research conducted in Chongqing reported that 65.6% of centenarians had disability associated with ADL [
23]. The data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) in 2013 [
24] found that the overall prevalence of disability among adults aged 80 years or more was 21.9%. The prevalence of disability in our study is higher than other recent studies [
25,
26], which may result from the following considerations. Firstly, previous studies assessed disability according to ADL and IADL [
9,
27], without considering the impact of impairment of sensory perception, social participation and mental status on compromising independent living status. This may result in under-estimation of the prevalence of debility. Secondly, the sample population in this study consisted of elder adults who either lived alone, were dependent on external support or who were aged 80 years or older, which is more likely to be disability.
Our study found that 34.3% of participants experienced multi-morbidity. This is lower than the findings of a meta-analysis of studies on the prevalence of multi-morbidity in developing countries, which ranged from 55 to 89% [
28]. The prevalence of older persons reporting multi-morbidity in our analysis was higher as compared with several relevant studies of Chinese older adults population [
14,
29‐
31]. The differences in the prevalence of multi-morbidity between studies might arise from significant differences in the criteria used to define multi-morbidity. In particular, self-reporting of chronic disease was employed in our study; consequently, this may more accurately reflect the incidence of multi-morbidity in an aged population.
Previous studies have reported a highly significant correlation between age and disability in older adults [
32‐
34]. In our study, we found that increasing age was associated with more extensive disability. This is in accordance with age-related loss of physical prowess with age [
35]; where the incidence of almost all chronic conditions increases with age [
36,
37]. In particular, the occurrence of chronic conditions such as presbyopia, loss of strength, balance and osteoporosis may have a considerable impact on functional independence [
38].
The results suggested that the participants who suffered from any of the tested geriatric troubles had obviously higher risk of co-occurrence of other listed deficits, As far as we know, no relevant research estimating the prevalence odds ratio for multiple geriatric deficits in a Chinese older adults sample has been conducted. The result was in line with that of a cross sectional study in Poland.
Theses information about the prevalence and risk of co-occurrence of the listed conditions seems crucial for both social workers and health-care policy makers. Health care providers should begin with extensive screening and preventive strategies to address the complex geriatric conditions.
Our study confirmed that older people receiving home-based care in rural Dongguan who were less physically active had a higher likelihood of disability. This is in agreement with the recognition that physical activity is beneficial to the physical health and independence of ageing individuals. A significant negative correlation between ADL score and physical activity was also reported in Sardinian older adults [
39]. Additionally, previous studies in the United States and in Korea [
40,
41] also indicated that lack of physical activity is associated with a reduction in the daily quality of life. So, older adults should be suggested to do some exercise or manageable housework to maintain the function of muscle and undamaged ability.
Our study indicated that less sedentary behavior significantly reduces the risk of disability. This is in agreement with the findings of Eileen Rillamas-Sun et al., [
42], which found that older women who were immobile for more than 10 h a day were ten-fold more likely to be disability than women immobile for less than 5 h per day. In addition, sedentary behavior is linked to multi-morbidity [
43] and with cognitive decline [
44]. It is vital to call for the older persons to reduce sedentary time for lowering the prevalence of disability.
Older individuals who did not watch TV reported a higher incidence of disability in our study. This is in contrast to the findings of Wu et al., [
23] who found no significant association between disability and watching TV in Centenarians. In contrast, a strong association between TV viewing time and disability was observed in an American study [
45]. These contrasting findings may be a consequence of participants in different studies being of a different mean age, as the sample population of the American National Institutes of Health (NIH)-American Association of Retired Persons (NIH-AARP) Diet and Health study had a mean age of 87 years, while the population considered in Wu et al. involved individuals aged over 100 years old. Moreover, we employed further considerations of disability, in addition to ADL as used by other studies, as we also considered mental status, sensory perception and social involvement in relationship to disability. Pragmatically, people with disability are likely to have reduced or no ability to watch TV, due to either an inability to see or to hear, or both. Moreover, the American study was a longitudinal study, with TV viewing time collected at baseline and disability conditions recorded at follow-up. In contrast, we employed a cross-sectional investigation where data on time spent watching TV and level of disability was collected at the same time. In our study, it may be that older people who spent more time watching TV are at high-risk of developing disability in the future, even although they were in good health when sampled. Moreover, the oldest people in our sample are more likely to be disability and also to have no access to TV.
The prevalence of disability in our study among older people receiving home-based care system was higher than in other national studies. However, 82% of all people with disability in our study self-reported mild disability that was unlikely to make a significant impact on their quality of life. It is therefore appropriate to identify and respond to the needs of older adults with different levels of disability with the aim to provide them with appropriate care and to prevent further deterioration in their health. Social workers who take care of older people should be trained on how to care for the varying degrees of disability of older adults and to provide appropriate intervention measures to reduce the development of further disabilities. Overall, this would provide older people with an improved, more beneficial and targeted service.
There are limitations to our study. As we performed a cross-sectional study, it is not possible to identify causal association between multi-morbidity, health-related behavior and disability. Further longitudinal studies on our sample population are therefore necessary. Secondly, only limited health characteristics were recorded, and in particular, the diet of our population, which is likely to impact on disability, was not included in our present survey. Thirdly, we conducted our study only within Dongguan city and consequently, concluding nationwide generalizations from this data might be limited when considering the diversity of customs, different climate zones and the imbalance of economic development throughout China.