The Effect of Group Counseling

The main objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of narrative therapy and group counseling on depression and loneliness among elderly women. This is a quasi experimental research method using post-test design with a control group. 24 women were selected from all the elderly women referring to Iranian Alzheimer’s Association in 2012 through randomized sampling method and have been assigned to experiment and control groups. The tools for assessing depression and loneliness were the Geriatric Depression Scale and the Loneliness questionnaire. The experiment group had eight 90 -minute sessions of group counseling narrative therapy which took place once a week. The collected data have been statically analyzed using independent t -test in SSPS-19. The findings showed that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of the experiment and control group and it can be argued that employing narrative therapy group counseling was influential in reducing depression and loneliness (P<0.01). The effect of group counseling narrative therapy on reducing depression and loneliness of elderly women has been confirmed by the results of this study. Based on the findings, conducting narrative therapy group counseling is strongly recommended in health care organizations for the elderly people.