A Study on Mental Health of Single Aged Persons in Home Perceived by Daughter-in-law

재가 독신노인을 부양하는 주부가 인지하는 노인의 정신건강에 관한 연구

Nowaday, there have a lot of changes in the demands of the aged persons. Their problems also came to the fore with diverse forms under the influences of industrialization, urbanization and nuclear family. To make the matter worse, the aged population is mounting rapidly. Also, such structure as nuclear family is widely disseminating uncomfortable to the aged. People is mainly being guided by self interest above everything else. Indeed, they had, all together, bad effects on our traditional value system regarding 'respect for the aged and devotion to patients'. It seems unfortunately obvious that the family responsibility is gradually weakening to support the old who is a dependent family. The result is that the aged must have suffered all sorts of hardships in lightenning psychological, physical and economical difficulties. First, to grasp the situations and conditions supporting for single aged persons from each view of psychological, emotional, family-relational, healthy, social and economical standpoints, and second, to analyze their own recognition levels thinking of their health conditions and the relationships between the supporting environments of old family dependants and their psychological healths and then finally, to propose suggestions being able to be helpful for living comfortably in an old age and thereby, building up good family relation. The statistical techniques used to analyze 115 respondents living in Puchun city are frequency, $x^2$ test, t-Jest, ANOVA, Pearson's Correlation Coefficiency and Regression analysis (SPSS package), pertnent to prove the hypothesis suggested in this paper. Of course, it is needless to say that more data are needed on this point. However, several main research findings can be summarized as follows: First, the better single aged persons may be in the habit of eating a meal and the higher they may think of their physical health conditions and movement, the more they want to participate in economic activities to be free from economical dependence upon their children and to overcome lonliness. Second, single aged women appear to have had higher ability to take care their health for themself than single aged men do. It is why signle aged women do not, in general, have big problems to manage their health. But, as shown in this paper, single aged person"s were more liable to the diseases of the aged and, thereby, requiring special medical treatment badly to be healthy. Third. single aged persons revealed potential desires to free themself from socio economic dependence upon their children even in simple labor Job which can draw a monthly salary of about W200, 000. Fourth, they are generally satisfied with their children's filial piety toward them. Nonethless, most of them appear to be reluctantly dependent upon their children and live lonly lives very much. Fifth, they seem to have some hesitation in expressing their candid opinions as that then are some others along with family environmental factors for psychological and emotiona stability. Accordingly, it is safe to conclude by saying that much attention should' be paid no only to socio-economic supports and better medical services for the aged but also to political supports of the society and towards their children for the aged's emotiona support, for improving the quality of their lives in old age and promoting efficiency in suporting for old family dependants.