The Effectiveness of Solution-Focused Approach on Increasing Social Adjustment and Reducing Clinical Depression in Elderly Women of Kermanshah

Elderly is one of the most important periods of human life, which requires a lot of attention to avoid any mental and psychological disorders and challenges . Two important challenges in this period are the lack of social adjustment and the increase of depression . Therefore, the aim of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of solution-focused therapy (SFT) on increasing social adjustment and reducing clinical depression in elderly women living in Kermanshah, Iran in 2020-2021 . It was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design with a control group and follow-up (two months after the post-test). The statistical population included all elderly women (60 years and older) in Kermanshah with clinical depression and social maladjustment in 2020-2021 . The sampling method was convenience Sampling. Therefore, according to Kresji and Morgan’s table, 381 people were selected. Participants filled out Bell’s social adjustment and Yesavage et al.’s elderly depression questionnaires. The final sample consisted of 30 people selected based on the inclusion criteria of the study and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups in the same ratio . The experimental group underwent 8 sessions of SFT twice a week, and the control group did not receive any intervention in the same time . Finally, the data were analyzed at two levels of descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (univariate covariance analysis) using SPSS-26 software . The results illustrated that the SFT in the post-test and follow-up phase compared to the pre-test was effective in increasing the social adjustment and reducing the clinical depression of the elderly (P<0 .01) . The results indicate that the use of SFT seems to be an efficient and practical method to improve social adjustment and reduce clinical depression in the elderly women, and the use of this method is recommended in other mental disorders of the elderly women .