Life-span developmental psychology study on Life satisfaction from fifties to elderly

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The purpose of this study is to analyse some conceptions of terminal illness and death held by the elderly who are now living or who died during the last two years. For the latter group, analyses were undertaken through the answers by the family members of the deceased.The main findings were as follows; 1. Among some of the living-elderly who had various different diseases, a comparison was made of the conceptions relevant to terminal illness and death. Among the cerebrovascular diseased elderly, attitudes toward death and relationships with family members and medical staff were both negative. Their retrospective views of their own lives were rather positive compared with that of the rheumatoid elderly who had a somewhat negative evaluation of their own past life; on the other hand, the rheumatoid were more positive in their acceptive attitudes toward death and toward family members and the medical staff. The digestive diseased and the healthy elderly both did well in various aspects o … More f daily living including that of human relationships, but the conceptions of terminal illness and death were less developed than in the above two.2. The development of the elderly's acceptive attitudes toward death was related to their attitudes toward the persons who they expected to be their final caretakers at the terminal stage. An acceptive idea toward death was most developed under the positive prospect of having the terminal caretaker be a member of the family with whom the subject lived, e.g., spouse, son or daughter.3. Various kinds of abnormal behavior seen just before death of the deceased elderly showed a rather intimate correlation with the family-elderly negative relationship, the negatie evaluation of own life and anxious concern over the bereaved.4. Acccording to the result of factor analysis, the conceptions of terminal illness and death in the living-elderly had three main psychological factors. In particular, the factor of "quality of life and acceptance of death" was considered as most fundamental. With regard to the deceased elderly, it was suggested that the above-mentioned basic factors had been divided into three subfactors. The above findings show that the quality of life has some intimate relation with the development of an acceptive attitude toward death. Less