The Role of Irrational Beliefs and Attitudes to Death in Quality of Life of the Older People

 Ageing is a natural phenomenon in the life of every person, and quality of life and identifying its related factors is one of the interesting areas in aging psychology. Given the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to determine the role of attitude to death and irrational beliefs in the quality of life of older people.

 The method of this study is descriptive-correlational. The study population included all persons over 60 years who lived in Ardabil City, Iran, in 2014. Of them, 150 people were selected using the convenience sampling method and responded to the questionnaires of irrational beliefs, attitudes to death, and quality of life. The obtained data were analyzed by the Pearson correlation and multivariate regression tests.

 The results showed that the total score of quality of life had a negative correlation with fear of death (r=-0.36; P<0.000), avoidance of death (r=-0.16; P<0.05), acceptance with escape of death (r=-0.17; P<0.03), helplessness for change (r=-0.27; P<0.001) and emotional irresponsibility (r=-0.24; P<0.002). But, it had a positive correlation with approach acceptance toward death (r=0.31; P<0.001). The results of regression analysis also showed that irrational beliefs could explain about 9% and attitude to death about 30% of the variance in quality of life.

 The results of this study showed that attitude to death and irrational beliefs could predict the quality of life in older adults. Thus the older adults’ quality of life can be improved via cognitive intervention in these variables.