The Correlation between Spiritual Health and Loneliness in the Elderly

Loneliness is a serious issue among the elderly that considerably affects their health. Spiritual health might affect the level of loneliness in these individuals. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the relationship between spiritual health and loneliness.

This cross-sectional study was performed on 330 older adults who live in the western areas of the Golestan Province, Iran in 2019. The subjects were selected using stratified random sampling method with proportional to size. Data were collected by the short form of the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S) and the Spiritual Health Questionnaire (SHQ). Data analysis was performed in SPSS software (version 18) using Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. Statistical significance level was set to 0.05.

The mean of spiritual health and loneliness were 96.57±4.10 and 21.25±9.05, respectively. There was no significant correlation between spiritual health and loneliness (P=0.72), but there was a significant difference between urban and rural residents in this regard (P=0.037 and P=0.003). In addition, there was a significant relationship between spiritual health and loneliness in general (r=-0.139 and P=0.02). There was an inverse correlation between spiritual health and loneliness among urban residents (r=-0.27 and P=0.001) but not among rural residents (r=-0.06 and P=0.41).

Based on the findings, there is an inverse correlation between spiritual health and loneliness among the elderly. This could be a useful finding for planners and activists in the field of geriatric mental health in development of educational counseling and support programs.