The effectiveness of life review therapy on psychological distress and social cohesion of retired teachers

Retirees bear many psychological and social pressures due to the simultaneous retirement age and old age. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out interventions aimed at reducing psychological distress and improving their social cohesion. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of life review therapy on psychological distress and social cohesion of retired teachers.

The current research was experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of this research was all the retired teachers of Birjand city in 2022 in the number of 290 people, of which 40 people who met the conditions to enter the research were selected by purposive sampling and divided into experimental (20 people) and control (20 people) group. The experimental group received a 2-hour session every week for 6 sessions in a group manner, and the control group did not receive the training during this period of time. Psychological distress questionnaires by Kesler et al. and social cohesion by Paskarla et al. were the research tools. To analyze the data, multivariate covariance analysis was used in the SPSS-26 software environment.

According to the findings, in the variable of psychological distress, the mean and standard deviation of the scores in the pre-test were 38.35 and 0.44 respectively in the post-test and 19.1 and 0.34 respectively. Regarding the variable of social cohesion, the mean and standard deviation of the scores in the pre-test were 0.54 and 0.82, respectively, and in the post-test were 95.5 and 0.78, respectively. The results of covariance analysis showed that therapeutic intervention based on life review was effective on psychological distress and social cohesion of retired teachers (p<0.01).

The results indicate that life review therapy can be used to reduce psychological distress and increase the social cohesion of retirees.