The Study of effectiveness of training of mind consciousness on reduction of the elderly 's feeling of loneliness and death anxiety in Sedigh Center of Khoramabad City

Background: In search of a conceptual framework, aging in human life can be considered as a process that begins with the gradual erosion of physiological mechanisms and disabilities in restoring vital organs' ability and ends with the end of life. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on reducing the sense of loneliness and death anxiety in the elderly in Sedigh center of Khoramabad City. Methods: Semi-experimental research design was a pre-test-post test with control group and the statistical population included all the elderly of Sedigh center in Khorramabad, which were kept day by day in the center. To this end, 24 elderly people were selected by available method and randomly divided into two experimental (12) and control (12) groups. To measure the variables in the pre-test and post-test, Templer death anxiety questionnaires and Russell's loneliness were used. Data were analyzed using multivariate covariance analysis (MANKOVA). Before the intervention, the subjects of the two groups were pre-test and then undergone mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for 8 sessions of 90 minutes. Results: After controlling the effect of pre-test in both variables, in the post-test, there was a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group, which was significant at the level of p<0.001. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy resulted in decreased sense of loneliness and death anxiety in the experimental group than in the control group. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the effect of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on reducing the sense of loneliness and death of the elderly is anxiety. Therefore, by teaching the techniques of mindfulness, one can reduce the sense of loneliness and anxiety of the elderly's death.