Meditation to improve the quality of life of community-dwelling ever-single older adults: A multi-city five-year follow-up experiment

ABSTRACT

This article reports a multi-city five-year follow-up study on the effect of meditation in improving the quality of life of community-dwelling ever-single older adults. Post-test quality of life, sense of coherence, peace of mind and life satisfaction scores of the intervention group were significantly higher in relation to the control group (Cohen’s d range = 0.69–0.72, p = .01–.03) and their own pre-test scores (Cohen’s d range = 0.66–0.91, p ≤ .01). Within the intervention group, post-test scores were higher for ever-singles from Asian and African cities, women, middle class, highly qualified, living alone, in good health, who regularly attended the meditations lessons and practiced at home. Home practice was the strongest predictor of higher post-test scores and the Tobit model indicated that scores increased by .812 with higher attendance and by .918 through regular home practice. Meditation enhances quality of life of ever-single older adults and can be used with some refinements for specific subgroups.

KEYWORDS:

• Ever-single older adults
• follow-up study
• meditation
• peace of mind
• quality of life
• satisfaction with life
• sense of coherence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.