| Summary: | 碩士 === 南華大學 === 生死學系 === 102 === This research purported to explore the life issues regarding the aging dilemma of the elderly placed in institutions, in an attempt to understand their adaptation to and coping with the journey towards death. Through purposive sampling, the researcher recruited 8 residents in a long-term care institution as research participants. Guided by hermeneutic-phenomenological method, this research adopted an interpretive viewpoint of psychoanalysis on life-meaning. The research text was formed by participatory observation in field and depth-interviews. The essence and content of elderly’s life dilemma along with the threshhold experience in the institution were then delineated and interpreted accordingly.
The findings of the research on the elderly’s life aging dilemma could be understood by two axial themes of adaptation and coping : 1. ‘the threshold experience of aging life’ and ‘meaning transformation process of aging life.’They can be further divided into four sub-themes: 1. the process of elderly’s life experience was displayed from ‘being abandoned,’ ‘be awaiting,’‘being ill,’to ‘being lonely.’ 2. responding to aging situation by creating meaning of life, 3. suffering than fear of death, 4. life review triggers self-transformation and spiritual power.
Based on the meaning-centered model this research proposed, the following suggestions are in order: 1. doing ethnogrphic studies on the elderly in institutions; 2. move from the terminal care to the elderly care; 3. sustaining religious service in elderly community; 4. establishing meaning-centered care model in long-term care policy. The suggestions for the long-term care policy are as follows: 1. devloping spiritual education progrm for the carers; 2. reviewing distribution ratio of manpower in institutions; 3. actualizing de-institutionalized long-term care policy; 4. learning to live with aging conditions and promoting positive social atomersphere towards elderly. Future studies on the subject may be directed towards the most inflenential factors of long-term care model that affect elderly’s adaptation as well as the elderly’s positive behavioral changes.
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