Comparison of Mental Health of the Elderly Living in the Household (with Children) with the Elderly Living in Nursing Homes in the Cities of Tabriz and Urmia (Iran) in 2018

Abstract

During the contemporary period, man has undergone transformations in terms of lifestyle, social relations, and economic affairs throughout all human history. These changes, in some cases, have had a reversible effect on human health, due to the lack of coordination with the evolutionary processes that man has acquired over the course of tens of thousands of years of social evolution. One of these dimensions is the mental health of the community; among other things, the mental health of the elderly is of particular importance due to human capital and future generations. In this research, the main goal is to achieve the current state of mental health of the elderly living in the home (in the neighbourhood) and living in the nursing home and compare these two. The concept of mental health in this research is based on various approaches, from the point of view of global health ontologists and role theorists (Conrad Lorenz), self-actualisation and realization (Yong and Allport), humanists (Maslow), the network of sustainable social networks Adler), theories of psychoanalysis (Freud, Ericsson, Kurt Levine, Carl Rogers) and theories with other approaches have been suggested. The concepts and variables used in this research are mental health and ageing and 28-GHQ measurement tools, which are components of depression, anxiety, social functioning and physical condition of the elderly living in the home and the nursing home. The research method is Ali-Comparative and 100 non-Alzheimer's sample of 50 men and women from Tabriz and 50 men and women from Urmia, including 100 people, 50 people living at home and 50 people living in nursing homes. In analysing data, descriptive and inferential statistics and t-test were used. The results of this study revealed that the mental health of men living in nursing homes has a better mental health status than the women living in nursing homes; and, conversely, women living in the home have a higher mental health status than men living at home.