Religious involvement, spirituality and personal meaning for life: Existential predictors of psychological wellbeing in community-residing and institutional care elders

Abstract

The psychosocial model of mental health postulates that wellbeing in late life is significantly influenced by several externally generated factors such as social resources, income and negative life events. More recently, the gerontological literature is drawing attention to the increasingly influential role of existential factors such as religiosity, spirituality and personal meaning in the psychological wellbeing of older adults. This study examined the unique and combined contribution of specific dimensions of religiosity, spirituality and personal meaning in life as predictors of wellbeing in samples of community-residing and institutionalized older adults. Using hierarchical regression analyses, the results showed that personal meaning, involvement in formal religion, participation in spiritual practices, importance of religion, degree of comfort derived from religion, sense of inner peace with self, and accessibility to religious resources were significant predictors of wellbeing for the combined sample. The pattern of associations between wellbeing and the preceding psychosocial dimensions was, however, stronger for the institutionalized elders. The findings confirmed that existential measures of personal meaning, religiosity and spirituality contributed more significantly to the variance in wellbeing than did demographic variables or other traditional measures such as social resources, physical health or negative life events. The importance of existential constructs of religiosity, spirituality and personal meaning in helping older adults to transcend old age stresses and sustain wellbeing are discussed.