Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Aging is a natural process of change that affects a person's social and psychological status and brings about new developments. Life expectancy is one of the factors closely associated with getting older. Because the presence of psychological symptoms, such as low life expectancy, in addition to imposing high costs on the health care system, results in poor treatment outcomes. Timely diagnosis and treatment of psychological symptoms in older people increased recovery, longer maintenance on other treatments, and improved overall quality of life. Consequently, psychological therapy can assist older adults in recovering from their individual, societal, and economic impairments. Logotherapy is one of these psychological procedures that assists clients in discovering the purpose of their lives. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is another subgroup of third–wave psychotherapy that can lessen some of the secondary effects of aging by increasing the life expectancy of older adults. The present study was done to compare the effects of logotherapy and ACT on the life expectancy of older adults.
Methods: This research method was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. In the first six months of 2021, all elderly residents referred to the municipality's health homes in Tehran City, Iran, were included in the statistical population. Of whom, 45 qualified participants entered the study by the available sampling and were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group (each group with 15 people). In this way, by announcing the call for 3 weeks, eligible older people were registered to enter the research (76 people). Then, the Life Expectancy Questionnaire (Schneider et al., 1991) was implemented as a data collection tool. Next, 45 older adults who scored lower than average in the questionnaire (average score=36) were included in the study. The inclusion criteria were as follows: having at least 60 years and at most 75 years, having a level of literacy in reading and writing, appropriate listening and speaking ability, lacking a history of hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital, and providing informed consent to participate in research. The exclusion criteria included missing two or more intervention sessions and withdrawing from the study. In the current study, the intervention method of logotherapy (Frankl, 1967) was employed in ten 75– to 90–minute sessions for the first experimental group. In the second experimental group, ACT (Hayes, 2004) was used in eight sessions of 75–90 minutes. After collecting the data, they were analyzed using the Chi–square test, analysis of variance, univariate analysis of covariance, and Bonferroni post hoc test using SPSS statistical software version 23 at a significance level of 0.05.
Results: The results showed that the difference in the average scores of total life expectancy (p<0.001) and components of functional hope (p<0.001) and strategic hope (p=0.018) in the posttest after controlling the pretest scores in the three groups was significant. The total scores of life expectancy (p = 0.009) and hope component (p=0.032) significantly differed between the experimental groups. Only logotherapy training had a significant effect on the total scores of life expectancy (p<0.001) components of functional hope (p<0.001) and strategic hope (p=0.005) compared to the control group. However, the ACT did not have a significant effect on life expectancy (p=0.213) and factors of functional hope (p=0.172) and strategic hope (p=0.142) compared with the control group.
Conclusion: Based on the findings, logotherapy is more effective in older people's life expectancy than acceptance and commitment therapy, and this therapeutic approach can be an effective intervention method for the life expectancy of older people.