The Psychosocial Problems of Institutionalized Elderly

Introduction: Aging is normal part of human development. Various changes takes place as part of the normal aging. Urbanization, nuclear family and more people seeking jobs outside the country make people to leave the elderly to old age homes. Institutionalization brings a lot of adjustment and life pattern changes in their day to day life. They undergo a lot of psychosocial problems as they are abandoned by their children and relatives. Therefore the investigator is interested to find out the psychosocial problems of institutionalized elderly. Materials and Methods: Descriptive research design used for this study. Sample for the study consist 86 institutionalized (both men and women) selected through non - probability purposive sampling. Data collected using rating scale and analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: Findings of study showed 47.7% of samples had mild psychosocial problems, 46.7% of the samples had moderate psychosocial problems, 3.5% of the samples had severe psychosocial problems and 2.3% of the samples had no psychosocial problems. Conclusion: This study has shown that in general all the institutionalized elderly persons had some psychosocial problems and these psychosocial problems are dependent on age, religion, length of stay in the institution. Some relaxation techniques and coping strategies should be taught to institutionalized elderly persons to reduce their psychosocial problems.