S. H. Kim, O. S. Cho, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-5, Mar. 2021
10.22662/IJBSA.2021.3.1.001, Full Text:
Keywords: The elderly, life-sustaining treatment preference, depression, ego integrity, Social support

Abstract

Background/Objectives The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of the preference levels of the elderly for life-sustaining treatment on their depression and to analyze the mediating effects of ego integrity and social support as positive factors within the relationship between life-sustaining treatment preference and geriatric depression. Methods/Statistical analysis: The collected data was cleaned by a data coding process and executed data analyses such as descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, and stepwise regression analysis by the SPSS WIN21.0 program. The Sobel test was used for verification of the mediation effects of ego integrity and social support. Findings: As a result of the verification of the mediation effect of ego integrity on the relationship between the elderly's preference for life-sustaining treatment and depression, ego integrity (p<.05) is indicated as statistically significant, thus explained as a complete mediation effect. As a result of verifying the mediation effect of social support on the relationship between the elderly's preference levels for life-sustaining treatment and depression, social support displays a statistically significant (p<.05), thus explained as a complete mediation effect. Improvements/Applications: It is highly recommended that each senior welfare center and senior centers operate an ego integration program designed to recollect all stages of their past life at senescence and to be able to organize tasks to be achieved on each developmental stage. This study is meaningful and useful because there are not many studies on the relationship between life-sustaining treatment preference and depression in social welfare academia.

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