Relationship Between Fear of Falling, Balance Impairment and Functional Mobility in Community Dwelling Elderly

Fear of falling in elderly is a major cause of loss of independence, which has an effect on the physical function in them. The focus of the study is to find whether a relationship exist among fear of falling, balance impairment and functional mobility in the community dwelling elderly people. The sample consisted of 52 community dwelling elderly people of age between 65 years to 90 years (mean = 71.96, SD± 5.92). Fear of falling was measured using falls efficacy scale (FES), balance was measured using Berg balance scale (BBS) and functional mobility was assessed using the Timed Up and Go test (TUG). The data was analyzed using Pearson co-efficient of correlation to examine the relationship between FES, BBS and TUG test and with ttest. The correlation co-efficient between fall efficacy and balance performance wais –0.97 (p £ 0.01) and correlation coefficient between fall efficacy and TUG was 0.95 (p£0.05). This study concluded that there was a significant association between the fall efficacy, the balance performance and the functional mobility in the elderly people. This relationship has an important implication for the development of the rehabilitation programs that aim to improve the balance confidence and diminish its impact on function in elderly people.