LAUSR

Multimorbidity was shown to be related to various unfavorable health‐related outcomes and unsuccessful aging. In Poland, mass deportation of Polish citizens from the Soviet‐ occupied regions deep into the isolated territories of the former Soviet Union, took place from February 1940 to June 1946. The deportees and their children, frequently born on exile, were exposed to chronic stress, psychological and physical violence, extreme climate conditions, abject poverty and famine, infectious and parasitic diseases, and arduous physical labor, all in all, together resulting in cachexia and a wide range of psychiatric and medical stress‐related disorders. However, there has been a limited data on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its health and emotional consequences in those who had been deported due to political reasons, as most of the available research has been focused on war veterans or former Nazi camp prisoners. The aim of this study was to assess the frequency of multimorbidity and geriatric impairments in the group of the older Polish deportees to the former Soviet Union who still suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder. The presented results are a part of research on PTSD in the elderly people who or whose relatives had been persecuted for political reasons, and who had been deported to the remote regions of the former Soviet Union in their childhood, or were born in Siberia or Kazakhstan as a child of the deportees; the details of the project were described elsewhere. In brief, the respondents took part in medical (geriatric and psychiatric) and psychological assessment. Posttraumatic stress disorder was diagnosed by a psychiatrist according to the criteria of the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. The geriatric part included history taking with the use of a detailed questionnaire (incl. questions about 15 chronic diseases), review of past medical records and currently taken drugs, physical examination, and geriatric assessment, conducted by the medical doctors trained in geriatrics. Multimorbidity was defined as the simultaneous presence of two or more health conditions in an individual. Questions about history of chronic pain, falls, dizziness, hearing or vision impairment, memory complaints, and functional dependence were included in the questionnaire. Depressive symptoms were diagnosed according to the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression; frailty syndrome with the use of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging