STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF WRIGHTING "AUTOBIOGRAPHY" WHICH WILL URGE EGO DEVELOPMENT OF THE ELDERLY

2002 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 13672529
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Clinical nursing
• Research Institution: Kobe City College of Nursing
• Principal Investigator: NUMOTO Kyoko KOBE CITY COLLEGE OF NURSING, DEPARTMENT OF NURSING, PROFESSOR, 看護学部, 教授 (00198558)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ASAI Saori KOBE CITY COLLEGE OF NURSING, DEPARTMENT OF NURSING, ASSISTANT, 看護学部, 助手 (20326317) ; HARA Sachiko KOBE CITY COLLEGE OF NURSING, DEPARTMENT OF NURSING, LECTURER, 看護学部, 講師 (90290494) ; NISHIDA Masumi OKAYAMA UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF NURSING, SCHOOL OF HEALTH SCIENCE FACULTY OF MEDICINE, PROFESSOR, 医学部・保健学科, 教授 (70128065) ; TAGAMI Asuka KOBE CITY COLLEGE OF NURSING, DEPARTMENT OF NURSING, ASSISTANT, 看護学部, 助手 (80316059)
• Project Period (FY): 2001 – 2002
• Keywords: AUTOBIOGRAPHY / EGO DEVELOPMENT / GERONTOLOGICAL NURSING / ELDERLY / MENTAL HEARTH

Research Abstract

The purposes of the present study are to clarify how writing an autobiography can help the elderly boost their ego development and to discuss the significance and possibility of utilizing this activity as a nursing tool to maintain the mental health of the elderly.
Progress and Results of the Study
To encourage the elderly to recall their life history and help boost their ego development, having someone listen to their story appeared to be an efficient approach. Based on this assumption, in 2001 we selected nine residents of a healthcare facility for the elderly to tell their life story. The stories told by the elderly were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. The study focused on how the elderly recalled their life so that a storytelling pattern can be identified and the significance of this approach in the nursing and care of the elderly can be evaluated. Individual life stories, which were affected by historical and social events and culture, were both unique and varied. The tim e spent describing various periods of their life indicated the significance of those periods and the individual structure of the patient's life. These results suggest that a practical technique to help the elderly boost their ego development is the writing of their autobiography. In 2002, we selected four subjects from a private residential home for the elderly and introduced them to the "autobiography program" according to the results obtained in the 2001 project. In this program, we have adopted the "intervention technique" to assist them in writing their autobiography through individual interviews. Currently, the participants are editing their autobiography. We are now in the process of validating the effects that writing an autobiography has on boosting the ego development of the elderly by analyzing the results obtained before and after the introduction of the program using Erikson's development task achievement scale (Japanese version, Shimonaka et al., 2000), GHQ28 scoring, and the PGC Moral Scale and by analyzing and evaluating the interviews.