Spirituality and religion important in final years
The importance of religion and spirituality in older people’s lives should be given more value according to a new university study that highlights the apparent limitations of many studies on ageing in Australia.
A study by researchers at the School of Psychology, University of Adelaide, with 14 women aged 60 to 89 included participants who were spiritual and religious or just spiritual. They all identified three overarching personal categories of personal agency, social value, and quality of life and death.
Whereas previous major studies described “successful ageing” as involving high levels of physical and mental functioning, an absence of disease risk, and being actively engaged with other people in the community, the Adelaide research found that older people also wanted a degree of autonomy over the place and manner of the last phase of their lives and their final days.
As published in the December edition of the Australasian Journal on Ageing, the report said that “for many participants the loss of autonomy and choice associated with institutional care was equated to the loss of quality of life and to personal indignity and suffering”. They wanted to retain control to the end and said that “having the choice to die with dignity would be wonderful”.
The study emphasised that there needed to be increased consultation with older people themselves in the development of “successful ageing” policies. It states that policy, planning, and service delivery in Australia can be more effectively tailored through broader consultation with a wide range of mature aged and older people.
