ARTICLE INFO

Article Type

Descriptive & Survey Study

Authors

Samadifard   H.R. (*)
Narimani   M. (1)






(*) Psychology Department, Educational Sciences & Psychology Faculty, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran
(1) Psychology Department, Educational Sciences and Psychology Faculty, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran

Correspondence

Address: University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Daneshgah Street, Aradabil, Iran. Postal Code: 56199-11367
Phone: +98 (45) 33510135
Fax: +98 (45) 33510135
hrsamadifard@ymail.com

Article History

Received:  October  25, 2017
Accepted:  March 6, 2018
ePublished:  August 29, 2018

BRIEF TEXT


The Iran-Iraq war and the resulting stress have caused the psychological feelings of war stress as a common disorder in war veterans and their families. In the meanwhile, emotional disturbances and incompatibility can disrupt the quality of life and mental health of the individual as well as family functions [1].

... [2-6]. The results of some studies have shown that people with high life expectancy have a satisfactory life expectancy [7]. One of the factors that may affect the lives of veterans' wives is the perceived social support and mindfulness [8]. Sustained perceived social support and mindfulness predict mental health. Therefore, by promoting perceived social support and education of mental health, individuals can be promoted and prevented from developing mental disorders [9]. ... [10-21]. Other factors that may have an effect on the life expectancy of veterans' spouses is cognitive flexibility [22]. ... [23-27]. In general, perceived social support, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility can play an important role in explaining and obtaining marital satisfaction of spouses [13, 20, 22]. On the other hand, life expectancy is also a factor in the satisfaction of spouses' lives. Women with high life expectancy will enjoy good quality marital satisfaction [28]. ... [29, 30].

The purpose of this study was to determine the role of perceived social support, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility in predicting the life expectancy of veterans' wives.

This study is a descriptive-correlational study.

This study was conducted in 2016 among all wives of veterans with over 25% of injuries covered by the Foundation of the Martyrs and Veterans Affairs of the city of Ardabil (numbering 3400 people).

According to the sampling constraints, 110 wives of veterans were selected by convenience sampling method. The criteria for entering the sample included a minimum junior high school education, age range of 40 to 60 years old, a resident of Ardabil, lack of history of psychiatric disorders and severe physical problems (according to spouses themselves), and the willingness to participate in the study and the exclusion criteria included Unwillingness to continue working with researchers.

In the present study, perceived social support, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility were considered as predictive variable and life expectancy as the criterion variable. The tools used in the study include perceived social support scale (MSPSS) [31-33], mindfulness scale (MASS) [34, 35], cognitive flexibility scale (CFQ) [36, 37], and life expectancy scale (SHS) [ 38, 39]. In order to comply with the ethical point of view, after explaining the research objectives to the wives of veterans, the confidentiality of information was assured. For this purpose, tools without a completed name and those spouses who did not want to participate in the study were excluded. To analyze the data in the descriptive statistics section, frequency, mean and standard deviation were used and in the inferential statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression tests were used and data were entered into SPSS 23 software.

The mean age of participants was 48.23 ± 4.11. In terms of education, 25 (22.8%), 69 (62.7%) and 16 (14.5%) had junior higher school, diploma and university education respectively. In terms of occupation, 92% were housewives and had an average of 2 children. The economic status was good in 16 (14.5%), moderate in 77 (70%) and weak in 17 (15.5%). The mean scores of research variables for perceived social support of the family was 11.77 ± 2.32, perceived social support of friends was 10.58 ± 2.04, perceived social support of other people was 12.35 ± 2.96, mindfulness was 56.62 ± 11.48, Cognitive flexibility was 24.33 ± 5.21 and life expectancy was 23.87 ± 5.41. There was significant relationship between perceived social support from family (r = 0.42), friends (r = 0.27) and others (r = 0.39) and between cognitive flexibility with perceived family social support (r = 0.47) ), Friends (r = 0.31) and others (r = 0.38). There was a significant relationship between cognitive flexibility and mindfulness (r = 0.45). Also, there was significant relationship among perceived social support of the family (r = 0.46), friends (r = 0.29), others (r = 0.49), mindfulness (r = 0.53) and cognitive flexibility (r = 0.55) with life expectancy among veterans' spouses (p <0.05; Table 1). Also, perceived social support, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility were explained by 0.47 of life expectancy variance, of which 0.10 was related to perceived social support by the family, 0.11 was related to other social support, 0.12 was pertinent to the mindfulness and 0.14 was related to cognitive flexibility. Totally, according to beta coefficients, the most predictive power was related to cognitive flexibility (p <0.05).

The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between perceived social support and life expectancy among veterans' spouses. This finding is consistent with the results of other studies on the role of social support in marital satisfaction [11, 13], social well-being [12] and quality of life [14]. The results of this study showed that wives of veterans with high perceived social support had high life expectancy. In contrast, spouses with poor perceived social support had a low life expectancy. Other findings also support the role of perceived social support in improving marital satisfaction and reducing depression and anxiety [11]. Another finding of the present study was a significant positive correlation between mindfulness and life expectancy among veterans' spouses. Other research results have shown that mindfulness is one of the effective factors in improving health [17, 18], improving marital relationship [19], marital satisfaction [20], and quality of life [21] of spouses. The findings of this study were consistent with these results. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between cognitive flexibility and life expectancy among veterans' spouses. The findings were consistent with the results of other studies on the effect of cognitive flexibility on improving marital relationships [22] and the reduction of psychological problems [25,26] of spouses.

It is suggested that similar studies be carried out on veterans' wives in other cities and their results should be compared with the findings of this study. It is suggested that other data collection methods such as interviewing and observation be used to obtain more complete and accurate information. Finally, it is advisable to help spouses improve life expectancy by increasing social support and training for increased cognitive-mindfulness and cognitive flexibility.

The present study contained some limitations. The study was conducted on veterans' wives of Ardabil city, which makes generalization of the results difficult to other cities. The use of self-report scales was one of the other constraints. Due to some limitations, in this study, variables such as level of education, occupation, economic status and the like were not explored. Certainly, their examination could help to clarify the life expectancy of veterans' wives.

Perceived social support, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility are among the variables associated with the life expectancies of veterans' wives and can predict it. In general, wives with higher levels of perceived social support, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility have a higher life expectancy than other spouses.

We sincerely thank the officials of the Foundation of the Martyrs and Veterans Affairs in Ardabil who accompanied the researchers with patience.

There is no conflict of interest.

In order to observe ethical considerations, after explaining the goals of the study, the wives of the veterans were insured about confidentiality of information.

Funds have been provided by the authors.

TABLES and CHARTS

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CITIATION LINKS

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