Life Satisfaction in the Elderly: The Role of Mental Health and Loneliness

Aging is one of the highly important stages of human life, during which people face a wide range of physiological and psychological changes. During these changes, issues such as mental health, loneliness and life satisfaction appears to be crucial. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between mental health and feeling of loneliness with life satisfaction in the elderly of Ahvaz. The research design was correlational. The statistical population of the study included all people over 60 years old living in Ahvaz, Iran, among whom 400 were selected using convenience sampling method. The tools applied in this research included Goldberg's mental health questionnaire and Russell et al.’s loneliness, and Diener et al.’s life satisfaction questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed using the statistical methods of Pearson’s correlation coefficient and stepwise regression. The findings indicated that mental health disorders (r=-0.17) and loneliness (r=-0.14) have a significant negative relationship with life satisfaction in the elderly (P0.01). Besides, mental health disorders and feeling of loneliness could significantly predict 4% of the changes in life satisfaction in the elderly, and the share of mental health disorders was more than that of feeling of loneliness. According to the above-mentioned results stating that the feeling of loneliness and mental health are related to life satisfaction, it seems necessary to strengthen the communication network of the elderly through their more participation and activity in their warm hearth and local centers in order to reduce the feeling of loneliness among them. It is also suggested that counselors and psychologists working in the field of elderly, should take steps to increase mental health and cosecuently increase the level of the eldery’s life satisfaction.
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