J Korean Acad Adult Nurs.  1999 Mar;11(1):50-62.

The Effect of a Group Reminiscence Therapy on Pain, Depression and Self-Esteem of the Elderly: focused on institutional elderly with chronic pain

• Kim SY

Abstract

In the 21st century, the number of elderly population will reach 10% of Korean's total population, As the elderly population are increasing, the anticipation of the elderly with chronic health problem are also increased. They feel social isolation, alienation because of pain, and psychological flinching such as depression, but they can not control appropriately their chronic pain. Therefore, this study is an attempt to expose a group reminiscence therapy effect to decrease pain and depression, increasing self-esteem of the elderly as effective therapeutic nursing intervention This study is conductcd for 5 weeks from July 28 to August 31, 1997. The Subjects of this study consisted of 33 the elderly women having ronic pain. 17 of 33 residents S nursing home were ontrol group in C city. 16 of 33 resident E nursin home were experimental group in M city. The study design was a nnneqi.uivalent nontrol group with a pretest-posttest design. As for the tool for this study, Visual An logue Scale and Discriptive rating Scale were u ed to measure the pain, Zung's Depression Status nventory(DSI) which was translated by Yang S k Ha was used to measure the depression, and self-esteem scale which was translated by Byung Jae Jeon was used Lo measure self-esteem. As for the process of the study, demo raphic variables, pain, depression, self-esteem were tested with both the experimental and control grou prior to the group reminiscence. The ezperimental group was divided into 3 subgroup and a total of 4 ession of the group reminiscence therapy was performed to the experimental group for an hour at a time once a week from the first to the fourth week. Analysis of this study was computerized by using SPSS/PC. and the homogeneity which may be affected by various bariables was verifie with Chi-square and t-test, the reliablity of th tools with Cronbach's alpha, the comparison of pre and post-test with t-test in the Pain, Depression, and Self-Esteem among the experimental group and control group. The Pearson Corelation Coefficient was for analysis the relation of the Pain, Depression and Self-esteem. The results of the study can be summarized as follows ; 1. The first hypothesis, the degree of pain will be decreased on the experimental group which performed group reminiscence therapy than that of control group, was supported. VAS(t = -2.35, p=.025), DRS(t= -2.11, p=O.43). 2. The second hypothesis, the degree of depression status of the experimental group which has perfomed group reminiscence therapy will be reduced than control group was supported(t= -2.53, p= .017). 3. The third hypothesis, self-esteem of the experiinental group which has performed group reminiscence therapy will be increased than that of control group was not supported(t=1.34, p= .191). 4. The fourth hypothesis, the correlation with pain, depression, self-esteem was to appeared highly. The significance of this study through the above results shows that the Group Reminiscence Therapy is an effective nursing intervention for the elderly with chronic pain and depression.

MeSH Terms

Aged*
Chronic Pain*
Depression*
Emigrants and Immigrants
Female
Humans
Nursing
Nursing Homes
Social Isolation