Feeling Guilty and Anxiety in the Elderly: The Role of Existential Concerns

Feeling guilty and anxiety are part of the most important human experiences, especially in the elderly, which can affect their mental health. Hence, identifying the factors that affect them is of particular importance. Therefore, this study aimed to predict feeling guilty and anxiety based on existential concerns in the elderly. The present study was a descriptive study, of correlational type. The statistical population included non-resident elderly in the nursing homes of districts one, three, and five of Tehran, Iran in 2019, among which a sample of 150 people were selected using convenience sampling method. The research tools included existential anxiety questionnaire (Massoudi Sani et al.,) guilt inventory (Kugler & Jones) and Anxiety Inventory (Cattle). The collected data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. The results showed that sense of responsibility and death anxiety had positive and significant relationship with feeling guilty, existential concerns (meaninglessness, sense of responsibility, loneliness and death anxiety) were positively and significantly related to anxiety. The results of multiple regression analyses also revealed that 11% of the variance of feeling guilty and 22% of the variance of anxiety was explained by existential concerns. Therefore, according to the findings, it can be said that using strategies to reduce the existential concerns of the elderly seems to be an effective measure to reduce their feeling guilty and anxiety.