The relationship between self-compassion and fear of aging in the elderly: the mediating role of spiritual health

Fear of aging is one of the important factors of aging experts in today's psychological world. Fear of aging always threatens the conscious person at any age. But the experience of this feeling in old age has a special depth and meaning. The main purpose of this research was the relationship between self-compassion and fear of old age: the mediating role of spiritual health in the older adults of Ilam city.

The current research is a cross-sectional study (descriptive correlation type), the statistical population of this research was the elderly with an age range of 65-80 years in the year 1400. The sampling method was purposeful and the samples of this research included 300 (men/ an elderly woman from the city of Ilam. Self-compassion questionnaires of NAF, Lasher's fear of aging questionnaire and Polotzin and Ellison's spiritual health questionnaire were used. Maximum Likelihood (ML) was used using SPSS version 26 software.

From the total (n=300) research sample, 140 (46.77%) were men and 160 (53.33%) were women. In the studied sample, in terms of age range, 157 people (52.33%) in the age group of 65 to 69 years, 85 people (28.33%) in the age group of 70 to 75 years, and 58 people (19.33%) in the age group they were 76 to 80 years old. The path coefficient values in the research model indicated that self-compassion directly explains 43% of the changes related to the fear of aging variable. On the other hand, the results showed that the self-compassion variable has an effect on the fear of aging indirectly through the mediator variable - spiritual health. (p<0.05).

The results showed that there is a significant relationship between self-pity and fear of aging in older adults. Also, the mediating role of spiritual health in relation to fear of aging was confirmed. It is concluded that the variables of self-compassion and spiritual health can be used in the educational interventions of the fear of aging in the elderly.