The Effectiveness of Reality Therapy on the Life Expectancy and Psychological Well-Being of the Elderly Living in Nursing Homes

The aging process can be known as a set of structural and functional adverse changes that accumulate increasingly with the increase of age, and results in the decrease of components like life expectancy and psychological well-being of the elderly. However, the mentioned components can be improved. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of reality therapy on the life expectancy and psychological well-being of the elderly living in nursing homes. It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population of the study included of all the elderly living in nursing homes of Hamedan, Iran in the second six months of 2022. The sample included of 30 people selected using purposeful sampling method and according to the inclusion criteria of the stdy. Participants were randomly assigned into two 15-member groups of experimental and control. The experimental group received 10 sessions of reality therapy intervention and the control group did not receive any intervention in the same time. The measures conducted of Schneider's life expectancy and Ryff’s psychological well-being questionnaires. Finally, the collected data were analyzed at two levels of descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (univariate covariance analysis) by SPSS version 24 software. The results illustrated that reality therapy intervention is significantly effective in increasing the life expectancy of the elderly and in increasing their psychological well-being (P<0.05). Therefore, the reality therapy protocol can be applied as one of the effective psychological interventions in increasing the life expectancy and psychological well-being of the elderly.
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