Determinants of life satisfaction among Japanese elderly women attending health care and welfare service facilities

Abstract

Prolonged life expectancy must be recognized as an excellent achievement of modern medicine, but not all the elderly people are satisfied with their lives. Life satisfaction is a multi-dimensional issue that depends on many objective and subjective characteristics. In this study, we aimed at investigating the factors affecting life satisfaction of 314 elderly Japanese women attending in 28 elderly-care and welfare facilities at Tokushima Prefecture, Japan. Our results indicated that elderly subjects with depression tendencies always show significantly lower degrees of life satisfaction than others who are not depressed (p<0.001) regardless of their cognitive status. Furthermore, elderly women who shared decision for their living place and whose opinions were considered for daily life decisions reported significantly more life satisfaction levels than others. We conclude that elderly life satisfaction is affected by various determinants however, with different influencing weight. Life satisfaction of elderly people, with or without dementia, is greatly affected by their mood status and share in decision making. Avoiding elderly people depressive mood, sharing them in various daily decisions, considering their opinions, and allowing them to decide their elderly-care facility placement are crucial determinants for their life satisfaction and essential for their coping, adaptation, well-being and successful aging.

Frequency and Associated Factors for Care Giving among Elderly Patients Visiting a Teaching Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan

“…Financial need was the most commonly reported unfulfilled need. These results are in contrary to findings of a study done in Japan on females with or without dementia and showed majority of the females without dementia were satisfied with their daily life and economic status [22]. This highlights the need for pension plans and other insurance plans that can provide financial support in the retired population.…”

“…Majority of the people had an impression that the care provided by the care giver improved their quality of life [22].This is very important because quality of life in the main focus of providing care to the elderly population.…”

Comparison of the Prevalence and Predictors of Depression in Taiwanese and American Older Patients With Arthritis

“…This finding confirms the results of Onishi et al. (). They proposed that depressed elders had lower life satisfaction.…”

An Investigation on Predictors of Life Satisfaction Among the Elderly

“…Different factors such as cognition, independency, emotional status, physical activity, social support and socio-demographic parameters can affect life satisfaction (Onishi et al, 2010). As the number of elderly people is on the rise; therefore, further studies are needed to improve life satisfaction in this group.…”