Resilience, Death Anxiety, and Depression Among Institutionalized and Noninstitutionalized Elderly

The present study was designed to find out level of resilience, death anxiety, and depression among institutionalized and noninstitution-alized elderly. Purposive sampling was used and a total of 80 elderly aged 60 years and over participated in this study. There were 40 noninstitutionalized (20 men and 20 women) and 40 institutionalized elderly people (20 men and 20 women) in the sample. Urdu translated version of State-trait Resilience Checklist (Sawar, 2005), Death Anxiety Scale (Templer, 1970), and Siddique Shah Depression Scale (Siddiqui & Shah, 1997) were administered on participants. The results revealed that noninstitutionalized elderly scored high on state-trait resilience, whereas, institutionalized elderly were having more death anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results showed no gender difference on state resilience, but elderly men had more trait resilience than elderly women. According to findings both elderly women and men had equal level of death anxiety. However, elderly women were found more depressed than elderly men. Through findings, it was also revealed that unmarried elderly exhibit more death anxiety as compared to married and widows. The findings of the study highlighted the need of enabling elderly with different skills so that they could easily cope with challenges and stressors of their life.