The Moderating Role of Hope in the Relationship between Death Anxiety and Psychological Well-being among the Ageing and Elderly

Abstract

The United Nations employs chronological age as a criterion for defining age groups, typically categorizing an "older person" as an individual aged 60 or 65 years and above.  Older adults are retired from active services and are at an increased risk of experiencing adverse events, such as bereavement, a decline in income, or a diminished sense of purpose and death anxiety which seem to affect their psychological wellbeing. Hence, this study was carried out to investigate the moderating role of hope in the relationship between death anxiety and the psychological well-being of the ageing and elderly. Eighty (80) retired civil servants comprising 49 males and 31 females between the ages of 60 and 65 ( M= 70.34 and SD= 8.389) were drawn using multi-stage (cluster, simple random: by balloting and purposive) sampling techniques as participants from pension department in local government secretariat Enugu State. The Adult Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1991), The Templer Death Anxiety Scale (1970) and the Psychological Well-Being Scale (Ryff, 1989) were used for data collection,Correlational design was adopted while moderated hierarchical multiple regression using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 27 software was used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that hope sig. = .023 at p< .05 positively predicted psychological well-being, death anxiety sig. = -.034 at p< .05 negatively predicted psychological well-being, while hope sig.= .011 positively moderated the relationship between death anxiety and psychological well-being among the ageing the retirees. It was recommended that the retirees should try to be hopeful for better days and not to dwell on unaccomplished desires and regrets; this would help to reduce death anxiety and increase psychological well-being among them. The clinical psychologist, government agencies and stakeholders should enlighten the retirees and older people on the importance of hope as a tool to overcome the fear of death and have balanced psychological well-being.