Relationship of Social Skills with Perceived Social Dignity and Mental Health of Elderly People

Abstract

Introduction

Social skills enables one to interact effectively and avoid the adverse responses. Factors such as non-use of the elderly's skills, impaired social skills, indifference and neglect of the elderly impair social dignity and conversely factors such as living independently and respectful relationship will improve social dignity. The aim of current study was to assess the association between social skills and perceived social dignity and mental health of elderly people as well.

Methods

In this cross sectional design, of the 300 elderly participants were recruited based on the randomized sampling method and Reggio social skills questionnaire, Jacelon perceived social dignity and general health questionnaire (GHQ12) were applied to gauge data by using a written questionnaire in the self report manner. For all tests a significance level of 0.05 was considered and statistics software SPSS version 21 and AMOS version 13 were used.

Result

The results showed a significant relationship between social skills and mental health base on gender and age and also; there was a significant relationship between social skills and social dignity (P < 0/001). Social skills predicted 26% of social dignity among older people and also social skills predicted 16% of mental health dignity. Therefore, social skills, was a proper predictor for mental health and perceived social dignity.

Conclusion

Due to the positive impact of social skills on the perceived social dignity and mental health of older population, it is needed to improve social skills of middle aged population which consequently affect on psychological well-being of aged people.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.