Loneliness, Humor Style and Quality of life among Older Adults Living with Families and in Old-Age Homes

Abstract

The present study aimed at studying the relationship between Loneliness, Humor style and Quality of life among older adults living in old-age homes and with families. The data was collected by convenience, purposive and snowball sampling teclmiques from older adults living in old-age homes (N = 120) and older adults living with families (N = 140). Loneliness Scale Urdu Version (Russell, 1978) was used to assess loneliness, Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin & Doris, 2003) was used to measure humor and Quality of Life Scale (Urdu Version) developed by World Health Organization in 2004 was used to measure quality of li fe. Graphical analysis indicated that the major reason for coming to old-age home is lack of caregiver. Another reason was domestic problems and illness, elderly adults living in old-age homes were not able to meet medical expenses as well. Pearson product moment correlation indicated that positive humor (i.e. self-affiliative and self-enhancing humor) was positively related with quality of life (i.e. overall health, physical health, psychological health, social relationship and environmental health) in older adults living with fami ly and in old-age homes. Whereas, loneliness was negatively related with quality of life (i.e. overall health, phys ical health, psychological health, social relationship and enviromnental health) in both elderly adults living with fami lies and old-age homes. Loneliness and negative humor (i.e. aggressive and self-defeating humor) were found to be higher in older adults living in old-age homes as compared to living with families. Whereas, positive humor and quality of life were higher in the older adults living with families as compared to living with old-age homes. The predictor for quality of life in older adults living with families was positive humor style and similarly, whereas, the predictor for quality of life in older adults living in old-age homes was loneliness and negative humor style. Mediation analysis was conducted based upon literature support on the older adults living in old age homes as humor style being the mediator between loneliness and quality of life. It was found out the positive humor style act as a role of mediator in the individuals suffered from loneliness which works as coping mechanism in order to enhance the quality of life as giving them satisfaction, happiness and hope to live further. Implications and suggestions were di scussed for future researches.