MENTAL HEALTH AND LIFE SATISFACTION AMONST ELDERLY WORKING AND NON WORKING WOMEN ABSTRACT In this present age of globalization where the world is constantly developing and reaching new heights, women have established themselves from the early conceived idea of being weak to strong, independent and equal with men.
but this doesn’t leave us short of illnesses be it psychological, mental, physical that accompany such developments amongst women, and to live a satisfying life in this busy age is a far cry for a lot of individual women striving, working hard, be it on a corporate working level or within the household working constantly as a house maker, a mother and a care taker. The objective of this research is to compare mental health status and life satisfaction amongst the working and non-working individuals elder women in particular, above the age of 65, by conducting a survey by distributing questionnaires to assess this particular data. For this research purpose 40 working women above the age of 65 and 40 non-working women over the age of 65 were taken. This survey proves there is a significant relationship between mental health and life satisfaction amongst working and non-working women. INTRODUCTION Life satisfaction is defined as your attitude towards one’s life as a whole.
at a particular point in time ranging from negative to positive. It is one of three major indicators of well-being: life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect (Diener, 1984). Studies investigating life satisfaction are survey based. The current paper measures life satisfaction with related mental health with good reliability and validity. Human is an objective creature always evaluating his life situation.
Until the attainment of his or her goal they feel no satisfaction. Perhaps it is true that pursuing his or her goals and desires is what leads them towards life satisfaction and better mental health. Therefore, Life Satisfaction is the central aspect of human welfare. It is ultimate goal every human being strives to achieve throughout their lives. Mental health as defined by the WHO is regarded as one of the needed factors for general health.
According to them health is a status of a wellbeing of body, mind, and society not only for the lack of disease (Boldero & Fallon, 1995). Kaplan and Sadock (1993) define the mental health as: “a condition of well-being and the feeling in person when can come to terms with society and personal situation and social features are satisfying for him/her”. In accordance to the previously mentioned statement mental health could be stated to be perfectly healthy and normal, given it is in good terms with the society, his or her personal situation and social features that are satisfying for him or her. Thus stating life satisfaction is a sociological imperative towards sound mental condition. The increasing economic pressure and hardships on this currently developing and modernizing days of living, with privatization and hike in prices of daily day to day commodities have forced or compelled the women to come out of their traditional within the four walls of their house living to join different organizations standing in equivalent levels or more, with respect to working men, to meet out the needs of their respective families. This particular incident has pinched them out of their comfort zones to tackle men in all ways imaginable and not.
This has overtaxed the energy and strength of working women around the globe. Studies suggest and have reported higher levels of anxiety levels among working women than housewives (Mukhophadhyay , Dewanji & Majumdar, 1993; Mukhopadhyay, 1996), Greater incidents of daily hassles In dual career women than housewives( Thakar & Misra, 1995), employed woman more frequently experienced perceived stress with marital or parental roles(Ahn, 2008) and depression was influenced by employment and marriage (upmanya &reen,1991). But even against this studies of Sachdeva and malhotra(2001) reported that those women who were both retired and homemakers had higher self-esteem and lower depression than single role women. And higher self-esteem points towards a healthy being and a satisfying life suggesting better mental health. Non-working women whereas are inclined towards lesser satisfactory lives or depression, studies suggests non-working women are bound more within the four walls of their houses, suggesting a lazy lifestyle, lethargic and have more chances of developing cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Andelman andAutonucci (1993) concluded that housewives are more depressed and have less life satisfaction as compared to retired (working) counterparts. There might be exceptions to this as well but with respect to recent studies non-working women are not much educated and take pleasure in taking care of their families more. Indian society Is moving towards a more industrialized urban society where changes are causing adverse effects on psychological well–being of aged women. Women are twice as likely as men to experience a major depressive episode. Shyam and Yadav(2004) concluded that males score higher on general well–being than females. Depression may occur at any age during a women’s life irrespective of educational, economic and ethnic groups and the consequences can include an increased risk of suicide, morbidity, medical illness and risk for poor self-care.
Indian studies showed that middle-aged women reported more psychological distress, more medical problems, lower morale and more negative effect than men Shirolkar and Prakash (1995), and Rashmiand Prakash (1996). Yet they are not sick in the psychiatric sense of the term. Ageing is a part of life, as age advances women tend to experience all kinds of hormonal disorders. Women’s reproductive cycle and post menopause bring fluctuations in their subsequent moods that include depression.
These events may lead to depression causing low self-esteem, helplessness, self-blame, social isolation and low morale. Depressive illness may make them feel exhausted, worthless, helpless and hopeless and sometimes develop the feelings to give up. Chanana (2001) has observed that women tend to suppress their need of autonomy neglect their health and fail to equip with skills, competence and self-confidence. Life style factors have a greater psychological impact than genetics, which increase longevity, delay illness and improve the quality of life. Jamuna and Rammurthy (1987), Jaiprakash and Murthy (1997) considered health status, education, life style, family relationship and social class, as some of the major affecting factors in the lives of women. Dhillon and Singh (2004) found predictors of women health are adjustment followed by social support, leisure activities and stress experienced in life.
Thus one of the best steps is to conserve energy, maintain health and preserve a high quality of life to get moving and remain productive. The society should foster a social environment that champions respect and care for the old. RATIONALE In this fast and progressing world people strive and work hard as in to live and lead a satisfying life, but not all accomplish the same. And according to WHO mental health is defined as that state of well-being where the individual can cope up with normal stresses of life, can work fruitfully and contribute to their respective communities and societies. These two separate attributes, satisfaction and mental health although two different aspects are connected by a thread walking hand in hand.
This study focuses on determining the relationship between mental health and life satisfaction amongst elderly working and non-working women. And the respondents chosen are all women because studies suggest there is prevalence of depression and other mental distresses amongst women than in men .Paul R albert (2014). II. METHODOLOGY AIM: To see the relationship between mental health and life satisfaction amongst elderly working and non-working women.
RESEARCH DESIGN This research utilizes a descriptive quantitative research design. OBJECTIVES 1) To compare working and non-working women on mental health. 2) To compare working and non-working women on life satisfaction. 3) To study the relationship between mental health and life satisfaction of working elderly women. 4) To study the relationship between mental health and life satisfaction of non-working elderly women RESPONDENTS The targeted population of this study is 40 working and non working women of the age 65 or above.
HYPOTHESES: There will be significant relationship between mental health and life satisfaction amongst working and non-working elderly women. Sample: A sample of 80 (working and non-working women) were purposively selected for the present study. RESEARCH INSTRUMENT The instrument that will be used here is a questionnaire. The questionnaires consists of information like name of the individual their respective age and their current employment status. There will be 2 questionnaires. One questionnaire consists of questions asking them about their life style and day today activities.
The second questionnaire contains questions that ask them about their present mental status that would be assessed later. DATA-GATHERING PROCEDURE The questionnaire is considered as the most appropriate data collection instrument for the descriptive research study, because questionnaire is used to collect personal information. To be able to get all necessary information needed for this study, the researcher will go distributing questionnaires to the women asking them to fill it out with the best of their knowledge. Afterwards, the researchers will do the tally of the data collected. Then the statistical tools will be applied by statistician for the analysis of data.
STATISTICAL TREATMENT To study about the mental health and life satisfaction amongst elderly women and non-working women. To determine this, mean was used. The mean was computed using the following formula: Where n was the sample. The means were interpreted using the following table of verbal interpretations of the perceived causes and beliefs of miscarriage. The t-test was used to compare the The value of the t-statistic was computed using the following formula: Where x1 and x2 are the means of two groups, s21 and s22 are the variances of the two groups and n1 and n2 are the sample size of the two groups.
Here
