Effectiveness of ontological security training on psychological safety and existential anxiety of elder people

Abstract

Introduction: Old ages are one of the most major period of human life which because of its nature and being close to death time enhances deep questions about existential identity of man, anxiety related to effacement and annihilation, meaningfulness, feelings of unsafety, loneliness and seclusion in mind of most elder people. So this research has been done to review the effectiveness of ontological security training on psychological safety and existential anxiety of elder people in nursing home of Yasuj city. Method: This study is a semi-experimental, two-group test with pretest, posttest and two-month follow up. The population includes all elder people residing at Ferdows nursing home in Yasuj city in 2018. The statistical sample is a 30-people group which was purposively selected and randomly divided into two test and control groups (each of 15 people). The test group was trained by 6 weekly meetings each takes 45 minutes with the training program of ontological security based on Giddens theory, while the control group had no interfere during the research. Then people of both groups have been post-tested and followed up. The data gathering tools were psychological safety questionnaire (Edmondson, 1999) and existential anxiety questionnaire (Weems et al, 2004) and the data was analyzed by repeated measure ANOVA in SPSS, v 23. Results:: The results showed that ontological security training significantly affects psychological safety (P<0.001) and existential anxiety (P<0.05) of elder people in nursing home, but this significance was not prolonged for existential anxiety in follow up step (P>0.05). Hence this kind of training could result in increasing psychological safety and decreasing existential anxiety of elder people of the center. Conclusion: Ontological security training decrease some part of existential anxiety of elder people while improving their psychological safety, so it could be applied as an effective training method for elder people.