Original articleFatigue and Aging With a Disability
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were recruited for an ongoing longitudinal study examining the role of secondary conditions in aging with a disability, specifically with MS, MD, PPS, or SCI. Recruitment strategies included advertisements in organization newsletters and websites (eg, Muscular Dystrophy Foundation), and inviting persons in the university's registry of persons with disabilities and other condition-specific registries (eg, SCI Model Systems). In addition, we contacted participants from prior studies
Descriptive Analyses
A total of 2041 surveys were mailed to potential participants and 1877 were returned; 15 of these were excluded (eg, no consent, returned survey after completion of study). Of the retained 1862 surveys, 1836 included responses to the fatigue items (participants were allowed to skip individual items as well as entire scales). Therefore, the overall participation rate for the current study was 90% (1836/2041). Table 1 reports the means and SDs of the demographic and disability-related variables.
Discussion
Fatigue and its measurement is a topic that has gained considerable interest in both geriatric and disability research. This is not surprising when one considers the potential impact of this symptom. In middle-aged and older adults with medical disabilities, self-reported fatigue is associated with worse physical function,23, 24, 25, 26 is equally or more impairing than problems such as pain and gait instability,23, 27 and is an independent predictor of mortality.28 There is also evidence that
Conclusions
Despite the study's limitations, the analyses presented are the first to directly compare levels of fatigue to a large national sample of the general U.S. population. We found, as hypothesized, that individuals with disabilities reported higher levels of fatigue than the normative population. Also, whereas in the general population reported fatigue was substantially lower in older age cohorts relative to middle age, the clinical samples that we studied did not appear to benefit as much from
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2022, Disability and Health JournalCitation Excerpt :Future research might examine how energy, exertion and fatigue are related and how they affect participation. The fatigue literature distinguishes between fatigue and fatigability where fatigue is the depletion of one's mental and physical energy, fatigability refers to the propensity to experience fatigue given the duration, frequency and intensity of activity.35 Within this frame, having more energy and building capacity to exert oneself reduces fatigability and the frequency and severity of the fatigue experience.
Approach to Fatigue and Energy Conservation
2021, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North AmericaCitation Excerpt :Walking on the beach or playing a round of golf may no longer be possible. Cook and colleagues34 concluded that people with disabilities do not reap the “retirement benefit,” and fatigue may not change for the better but get worse as people with disabilities “age into retirement.” Managing fatigue for individuals with PPS becomes more crucial with aging because of the potential negative impact on quality of life.
Supported by the Department of Education, National Center on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (grant no. H133B080024).
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.