A Study on the Role Expectations of the Sick Elderly People

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the living problems of the sick elderly people through their role expectation. Subjects are 72 sick people and 30 institutional elderly people who live in pure rural district neighboring Tokushima City. Every one of them is over 60 years old. We examined the relation between the place of life and role expectation on the basis of the results of the investigation. The results obtained are as follows: 1) Sick elderly people have high sense of independence, but have low role expectation toward others for example, their family and community members. This tendency was remarkable with sick elderly people at home. 2) Compared with the people at home, a few of institutional, sick people have roles toward their family but many of them have roles toward their spouses and neighbors, also about this matter significant difference was recognized. 3) For about the image of their old age, many of sick people answered the decline of health and pension life. Compared the people at home with the institutional, clear difference could not be recognized about this matter. For the reasons mentioned above, it may be said that elderly people have passive role expectations toward others. Especially, sick people at home show this tendency a great deal, and their adaptation is in declining condition even when we regard it with subjectivity. But institutional people have more role expectations than sick people at home, they are thought to be making efforts to find out how to copewith their adaptation . In this study, the problem of the life of sick people at home was suggested.