'Meaning in life? Make it as bearable, enjoyable and good as possible!': A qualitative study among community-dwelling aged adults who receive home nursing in the Netherlands

Meaning-making following loss among bereaved spouses during the COVID-19 pandemic (the CO-LIVE study)

This study investigates how individuals construe, understand, and make sense of experiences during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with bereaved spouses focusing on meaning attribution to the death of their partner. The interviewees were lacking adequate information, personalized care, and physical or emotional proximity; these challenges complicated their experience of a meaningful death of their partner. Concomitantly, many interviewees appreciated the exchange of experiences with others and any last moments together with their partner. Bereaved spouses actively sought valuable moments, during and after bereavement, that contributed to the perceived meaning.

Components of spirituality in older adults: A phenomenological study through interviews based on dignity therapy

AIM

A key perspective in examining dignity, which is important for older adults, is spirituality. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the components of spirituality in older adults through interviews based on dignity therapy (DT).

METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN AND JUSTIFICATION

Colaizzi's descriptive phenomenology was applied to understand experiences rooted in the life world of older adults from their own perspective.

ETHICAL ISSUES AND APPROVAL

This study was approved by the ethical review committee of the author's university. All participants provided consent to participate.

RESEARCH METHODS

Semi-structured interviews based on DT were conducted with 11 community-dwelling adults aged 65 years or older who were using some form of medical or social services. The interviews were transcribed, and the text was analysed based on Colaizzi's phenomenological method.

RESULTS

Four themes were identified as components of spirituality in older adults: trauma, being silent about hard experiences, forming connections and taking on challenges and discovering one's own spirit. The participants felt a sense of helplessness and frustration as they dealt with traumatic events. Feelings of shame, guilt and/or resignation prevented them from talking about the distress they were experiencing, but they were able to move forward after receiving emotional support and having opportunities to share with others. These processes led to the discovery of a new self.

STUDY LIMITATIONS

This study assessed the experiences of older adults in Japan and may therefore have been influenced by the social background and culture of Japan. Future research should target older adults from a variety of social backgrounds as well as those with specific health conditions.

CONCLUSION

The findings suggest the importance of creating opportunities for healthcare professionals as well as family, friends and community members to help older adults reflect on their lives and talk about their accomplishments and unresolved issues. Doing so should help older adults maintain their dignity while remaining aware of their mortality.

Caregiver interactions, perceived control, and meaning in life of elderly: the moderating effect of the elderly-to-social worker ratio

BACKGROUND

Meaning in life is a widely accepted aim in promoting psychosocial health in institutional care. However, how caregiver interaction and perceived control impact meaning in life among the elderly remains unclear. This study explores the effect of institutional caregiver interaction, family caregiver interaction, and perceived control on meaning in life among elderly residents in China, and the potential moderating effect of elderly-to-social worker ratio in these associations.

METHODS

Multistage random sampling was used to recruit a sample of 452 elderly residents from 4 elderly care homes in urban China. A structural equation model was used to test the study hypothesis.

RESULTS

Institutional caregiver interaction is positively related to meaning in life, and perceived control among elderly residents has a positive impact on meaning in life. Moreover, the elderly-to-social worker ratio moderated the relationship between institutional caregiver interaction and meaning in life, as well as between family caregiver interaction and meaning in life.

CONCLUSIONS

Increase elderly's meaning in life is an important service target for the caring professions in institutional care. Social workers affect the effectiveness of interventions on elderly's meaning in life in institutional care. A higher elderly-to-social worker ratio could improve the effectiveness of interventions on meaning in life for elderly residents.

Hopefulness and meaning in adults with disabilities' physical activity: A qualitative study

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE

The body of knowledge regarding the processes involved in changing physical activity behaviors in people with disabilities is very limited. This qualitative study is a follow-up to a pilot study on an individualized health coaching intervention for adults with any type of disabilities, titled Health My Way, that used a disability-specific health-promotion curriculum. In the original study, we found that participants in the health coaching intervention experienced improved health-promoting behavior, notably physical activity. In the current follow-up study, we examined the relationships among participants' personal sense of meaning and hope and the physical activity change process.

RESEARCH METHOD/DESIGN

Participants (n = 12) were a subset of participants from the original pilot study, who were adults with any type of disability, recruited by convenience sampling. These participants completed in-depth interviews to explore possible interactions among health coaching, health behavior changes (including physical activity), meaning, and hope. The curriculum-based health coaching intervention involved weekly, individual coaching for up to 12 weeks. We used thematic analysis to analyze interview data.

RESULTS

We identified three main themes: tapping into sources of meaning, increasing hopefulness, and hopelessness combined with lack of meaningful engagement.

CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS

In the context of health coaching for people with disabilities, identifying sources of personal meaning appears to be necessary for the initial motivation for goal-directed action regarding physical activity. Subsequent generation and maintenance of hope appear to be vital for maintaining physical activity in this population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Presence of Meaning in Life in Older Men and Women: The Role of Dimensions of Frailty and Social Support

Presence of meaning in life is an important component of eudemonic wellbeing while aging. While subjective health and interpersonal relationships are among important sources of meaning for older adults, less research has explored the gender differences in the potential contribution of these sources to the presence of meaning in late life. The current study aims to examine the associations of frailty dimensions (daily activities, health problems, and psychosocial functioning) and social support with the presence of meaning in late life, and whether these associations differ for older men and women. The study employs the data from the 65+ and Safe Study - a cross-sectional survey of residents of senior apartments. The data were collected in 2019 in a mid-sized Swedish municipality (N=618; age range from 64 to 106years, 60.5% female). Results showed significant associations of health problems, psychosocial functioning, and social support with the presence of meaning in life. Further, the results demonstrated no statistically significant gender differences in the associations between frailty dimensions, social support, and presence of meaning. However, since the interaction between health problems and gender approached statistical significance, this association was further explored indicating a more detrimental role of health problems in relation to the presence of meaning in life among older men than among older women. Overall, the study highlights the importance of physical and psychosocial health and social support for the presence of meaning in life among older adults and warrants further research on possible gender differences in the relation between health problems and meaning in late life.

Meaning Making in a Retirement Migrant Community: Religion, Spirituality, and Social Practices of Daily Lives

Meaning in life has also been seen as crucial to well-being, and especially, in later life. This study focused on the social complexity of meaning making processes and the role of religion and spirituality in them, by finding out the following: (1) How are meaning-making practices connected with religion and spirituality for Finnish retirement migrants of the boomer generation? (2) What does the role of religion and spirituality in meaning-making practices teach us about the relationship between individual and social aspects of meaning making? This was done by examining a particular group of older persons: Finnish retirement migrants aged 60 or over in Costa del Sol, Spain. The material for this study consists of 58 texts (written correspondence, dataset 1, year 2009), 10 semi-structured interviews (dataset 2, year 2011), and 30 completed online surveys with open-ended questions (dataset 3, year 2019). Key findings include that religion and spirituality are present in the lives of our informants in a variety of ways, playing a significant role in their meaning making, and that they appear as intertwined and not so easy to separate. A variety of religious and non-religious forms of spirituality exist in this population, and all of these forms can be relevant factors in meaning making. Also, the engagement in meaning making, contrary to what has been suggested in some of the literature about meaning in later life, not only occurs in response to confrontations with health issues, death, or other major life events. Instead, we found that meaning making occurs as a process that is often inherent to daily activities which may seem "trivial," but in fact turn out to be important sources of purpose, values, and connectedness. Contrary to the dominant modern ideal of the authentic, self-sufficient human agent, which is based on a problematically atomistic and individualistic anthropology, for our respondents, their authentic subject position is embedded in the social practices of their daily lives, which nourish their individual spirituality and are vital to making meaning.