The Comparison of the Effectiveness of Psychodrama, Reminiscence and Rational-Emotional and Behavioral Treatment on Death Anxiety in the Elderly

Given the growing number of elderly population, the importance of old age and the problems this age group faces in the society, such as death anxiety (DA), identifying and comparing interventions to improve elderlies’ mental health, treatment and rehabilitation seems required in elderly-related researches. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of psychodrama, reminiscence and Allis’s rational-emotional and behavioral therapy (REBT) on DA in the elderly. It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design and control group. The statistical papulation included all male elderly with DA residing in nursing homes in Kermanshah, Iran. At first, selected through convenience sampling was a center in which 40 elderlies were selected according to inclusion criteria and randomly divided to three experimental and one control groups. Psychodrama group received 12 sessions of 60 minutes within a period of one and half months, reminiscence group received 10 sessions of 90 minutes within a period of five weeks and REBT group received eight twice a week sessions within a period of one month. Templar’s short psychology and DA questionnaires were used to collect the required data. The results from univariate covariance analysis (ANCOVA) indicated that all three treatments were significantly effective in reducing DA (p < 0.05). Likewise, the results of LSD post hoc test showed the significant difference between psychodrama and reminiscence (p < 0.01) and between psychodrama and REBT (p < 0.01). Though the difference was not significant between reminiscence and REBT in decreasing of DA among elderly (p < 0.01). Hence, psychologists in elderly domain can utilize these interventions, specifically psychodrama, to reduce DA in aged people.

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