Recently, the social welfare for the elderly has become an important issue in Korea as the country phased into an aging society with an increased average life expectancy. Meanwhile, depression is a negative emotional state commonly witnessed in everyd...
Recently, the social welfare for the elderly has become an important issue in Korea as the country phased into an aging society with an increased average life expectancy. Meanwhile, depression is a negative emotional state commonly witnessed in everyday life of the elderly, and is considered one of the major emotional disturbances of aged people. Especially, as a single day spent in a care home lacks meaningful activities, the instituionalized elderly tends to experience more severe forms of depression, isolation, longingness, helplessness, and anxiety than the same age group living in their own houses, which leads to less life satisfaction. Hence, this research suggests Group Art Therapy for the instituionalized elderly in order to provide them with chances of experiencing social and emotional support. Further, based on such treatment, it emphasizes the need of a thorough examination on the trends of life quality improvement of the elderly. The aim of this study is to make use of Group Art Therapy for the institutionalied elderly to recuperate from the depression and increase their life satisfaction.
The subject of this research, which is divided into experimental group(n=8) and control group(n=8), is 16 people with fair level of communication and cognitive ability and mobility, who are randomly sampled among elderly over 65 years of age instituionalized in a care home “H” in region “E” in Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea. The criteria were to score more than 14 points above Depression Cut Line; to show life satisfaction less than 60%; and to voluntarily participate in the program.
The pretest and posttest were conducted each on 17th, January and 19th, March of 2016.
The length of the research is from 23rd, January to 13rd, March of 2016. During this period, the Group Art Therapy was conducted 2 times a week, 16 times in total, and lasted 60 minutes per session.
As measuring instruments, this research used a “Korean form of Geriatric Depression Scale”(KGDS) by Jeong et al(1997), which is a Korean standardized version of Geriatric Depression Scale(GDS) by Brink(1984) and Yesavage(1983) in early 1980s; and a “Life Satisfaction Scale for Elderly” that is standardized and modified for Korean by Yoon(1982) based on the study of Stones and Kozma(1980), the Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happiness(MUNSH).
This research analyzed its data through SPSS IBM 23.0 program. Before conducting the Group Art Therapy, the homogeneity between experimental group and control group was tested with the pretest results. Then, Mann-Whitney U test was applied to posttest results of each group after the program in order to verify the effect of the therapy on the depression and life satisfaction.
The result of the research is as follows:
1. The Group Art Therapy is effective in relieving the depression of the institutionalized elderly
1.1 The Group Art Therapy has a positive effect on relieving helplessness of the institutionalized elderly
1.2 The Group Art Therapy has a positive effect on improving cognitive ability and mobility of the institutionalized elderly
2. The Group Art Therapy is effective in promoting life satisfaction of the institutionalized elderly
The result of this research indicates that the Group Art Therapy can positively effect on the depression and life satisfaction of the institutionalized elderly. Therefore, it can be concluded that the Group Art Therapy for the institutionalized elderly would help them to sustain healthier life through increasing their life satisfaction by enabling them to have more active and enthusiactic attitude towards their life.