The purpose of the study is to explore and suggest social welfare for elders who are facing their last moment of life, considering what affects their attitude towards death. This study, based on other studies of Death Education Services, social suppo...
The purpose of the study is to explore and suggest social welfare for elders who are facing their last moment of life, considering what affects their attitude towards death. This study, based on other studies of Death Education Services, social support, Ego Integrity, and sociology of population as variables to positively analyses them how they affect elder's death attitude.
The subject covers 550 senior citizens from age 60 to 90 living in Seoul and Gyeong-gi province who have been educated death attitude and those who haven't. The survey was held by using a questionnaire from 4th to 15th of May 2009 while a preliminary one has been carried out from 27th April to 2nd May 2009. 485 out of 550 collected copies excluding 65 in appropriate copies have been used for statistics as following.
First of all, there are some general characteristics on the respondent group. The respondents include more women which shows the sex ratio is quite similar to senior citizen ratio of Korea. Age group shows 46.78% for 60 to 70, 44.85% for 71 to 80, and 8.37% for over 80, proving the population of senior citizen has decreased as age increases. Educational level varies from 50.11% of respondents under middle school, 18.14% for high school graduated, and 18.79% with college degree, which shows their educational level mainly stays under middle school, yet many others have completed higher education than before. Regarding marital status, 63.56% live together with their spouses showing that the average span of life has been lengthened. 9.92% is under very unhealthy condition, and 33.97% is not in good condition while the rest 39.24% is normal. 62.32% earns income by themselves or their spouses, however 33.76% of their income is less than 1 million Korean Won and only 23.47% earns between a million and two, which means it is not so easy to enhance their quality of life with the current financial state.
Secondly, people who have had participated in the death attitude education service tend to be more positive about death attitude rather than those who have not been educated. A correlation between time amount of the education and death attitude is positive showing that these variables is meaningful in affecting death attitude, which means the more they participate in the education, the more they are positive towards death. The influence of these variables are time amount of the education and participation in sequence.
Thirdly, the result of how much they are satisfied with the education could be written down as death understanding education, importance of social welfare expert's role, meditation and writing a will, education of overcoming death anxiety, and preparing death with dignity in sequence. The expert here refers to the social welfare specialist both programme teachers and administrators. The above-mentioned result suggests positive possibility of these supporters participating in the field of death education service. The satisfaction of the program is relatively high.
Also, correlation between social support and death attitude shows both variables have positive numbers but statistically not meaningful. After a regression analysis has been carried out to judge how social support affects death attitude, it appears that cause and effect of independent variable and dependent variable are not meaningful.
On the other hand, Ego Integrity and death attitude came out to be positively correlated. As shown above, Ego Integrity of people in declining years helps them to successfully adjust to their death-facing, self-realising, life satisfaction, mental health and peace.
In addition, according to the death attitude on sociology of population variable, men came out to be more positive towards facing their death than women. On the other hand, the more they get older, the more negative tendency they have. This tendency appeared the same in the result of age correlation, which means they get more anxious as they get closer to death. Regarding their income, death attitude tends to be positive as their income is higher, also showing the same results of income correlation investigation. Correlation of academic attainment shows people with higher scholarship are more positive. The anxiety of death can be more flexible for those who have higher scholarship statistically. In connection with marital status correlation, people with their spouses are more positive. Subjective recognition of correlation on their health state shows they are more positive who estimate themselves to be healthy.
Lastly, united regression analysis of death education service, social support, Ego Integrity, and sociology of population variables appears to be meaningful. Those who have higher Ego Integrity, younger, and men tend to be more positive towards death attitude. Different from the investigator's view, the result shows internal and subjective variables affect more on senior citizens' death attitude rather than external ones.
In conclusion, we should observe that anxiety of death appears to be higher as Korea is now entering an aging society. The study of overcoming death attitude and anxiety should be actively progressed when considering the characteristic of the country that the population rate of women is higher. Also, they need more variable programme as their attainment of academy is getting higher. That is, the study of social welfare is highly important in terms of how we should solve the problem that all the elder people are commonly being afraid and trying to avoid facing their death. Therefore, the study on policy of social welfare to support the senior citizens' death and drawing out the implication of primary factors which affects death attitude should be strongly advanced.
Death education Services in daily life helps them to live successful and happy years mitigating their fright and anxiety, especially the death education services provided by experts is supposed to help their last moment of life to recognize it positively