Abstract:

Our research was made to determine the effect of separate living of old women and men on their loneliness and life satisfaction in a nursing home as qualitative study. The universe of this was composed of totally 144 old people in a nursing home and sampling was not selected. Data were collected through face to face interviews using with survey form, loneliness scale (UCLA-LS) and life satisfaction scale. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal- Wallis H test and Spearman correlation test in independent groups were used in the evaluation. It is determined that 75.0 % of old people in the research were 65 years and over and 31.3 % of them was illiterate. 46.6 % of old people stated that they lived in nursing home because they did not want to be alone. 31.3 % of olds stated that they were not happy living alone. This research shows that separate living of old women and men decreases social relations. Important result of this research is that loneliness increases further with decrease in social relation. The other important result is that ratio of life satisfaction decreased in the old people who were not happy living separately but it increased in those who were happy living separately.

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