فهرست مطالب روناک غفوری

Aging is one of the most critical stages in human life. Today, older adults make up one of the largest social groups in the world. Death anxiety is one of the most common mental disorders in old age, whose prevalence varies due to individual differences, social/environmental factors, and views on death. This national study aims to investigate death anxiety and related factors in Iranian older adults.

This is a descriptive-analytical study with a cross-sectional design. The study population in this study is all people aged ≥60 years in Iran. Online sampling was done through social networks using a convenience method for 51 days from June 22 to July 11, 2021. The data collected tool was a questionnaire. The first part was a demographic form surveying age, marital status, housing conditions, household living arrangements, province of residence, place of residence (urban or rural), level of education, ethnicity, religion, and insurance coverage. The second part was the Templer death anxiety scale. The data was analyzed using t-test, ANOVA and regression analysis in SPSS software, version 22.

Participants were 1271 women and 1858 men aged 60-80 years. The mean score of death anxiety was 8.5±3.44, 42.5% had severe death anxiety, 40.7% had moderate anxiety, and 16.9% had mild anxiety. A significant difference was observed in death anxiety in terms of age, gender, marital status, household living arrangements, occupation, religion, insurance coverage (P<0.05), but no significant difference was observed in terms of housing conditions, place of residence (urban or rural), educational level, or ethnicity (P>0.05).

Death anxiety is a common phenomenon among Iranian older adults. There is a need to develop online programs to reduce this problem.

 Aging is one of the most critical stages of human development that has its own characteristics and conditions. The most common issues are the mental health of the elderly. Because this period is full of all kinds of feelings of shortcomings and disabilities. Since anxiety is a multidimensional structure, it can be expected to affect many aspects of the elderly. The present study was conducted with the aim of systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies in the field of anxiety in Iranian elderly death.

 This study reviews the studies related to the death anxiety of the Iranian elderly which were published in Persian between 1390 and 1398 (2012 to 2020). Using the keywords, death anxiety, elderly, the aged, searches were conducted in four internal databases, including Jihad Daneshgahi Scientific Database (SID), Iran Scientific Information and Documentation Research Institute (Irandoc), the countrychr('39')s Magazine Database (Magiran), the Iranian Medical Articles Bank (IDML), and CIVILICA, 61 titles were identified. After screening, 33 studies that met the entry and exit criteria were selected for the final review. We used Stata.14 and SPSS.22 software to perform a meta-analysis and descriptive data.

The results showed that 40.35% of the participants were women and the rest were men. The mean and standard deviation of participantschr('39') age was reported to be 67.80±6.44. The results proved that the mean of death anxiety is higher in men than women. And the elderly living in nursing homes had the highest average death anxiety score of 11.8. Studies were categorized into three sections: comparison (three studies), intervention (eleven studies), and factors affecting the Iranian elderly’s death anxiety (eighteen studies). The results of the meta-analysis showed that there is no positive and significant relationship between spiritual therapy and reduction of death anxiety in the elderly (P > 0.05). In studies with spiritual and behavioral therapies, the amount of heterogeneity was significant and thus a positive and significant relationship was observed between the reductions of death anxiety by these treatments.

 The results of the present study show that the average Iranian elderly’s death anxiety is low. The mean and standard deviation of death anxiety in Iranian elderly using the Templer questionnaire was 67.80±6.44 years. Religious beliefs, hopes for the intercession of imams and religious leaders, and hopes for deliverance from the hardships of this life seem to have contributed to the low death anxiety reported by Iranian seniors. Different results have been reported of the average death anxiety score of men and women. The difference in the findings of various studies might have resulted from the role of culture, religion, and dominant traditions of the society, the difference between the roles of men and women, and even the extent of the expression of fear and anxiety by men in the Iranian society. Most of the men show less tendency to express their emotions, including fear. Treatments and behavioral and spiritual interventions lead to a decrease in the elderly’s death anxiety through its influence on finding meaning in the elderly’s lives.

One of the most common abnormalities of learning is dysgraphia, which refers to a serious defect in mechanical writing skills. Children with dysgraphia may not be able to perform the actions required to write or transfer information within the hearing or vision to exercise and poorly performing in cognitive skills such as organization, attention and memory. Evidence suggests that active memory plays a crucial role in learning and performing complex cognitive tasks, including writing. In addition, regular exercise is considered as a key indicator of improving cognitive performance of individuals. Learning written skills through enhanced motor skills, which affects performance, motor schema and information processing and improves cognitive processes such as memory. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of motor exercises on active memory, writing skill and motor efficiency in children with dysgraphia. The research is a pre-test and post -test with a control group. The study population included all 3rd to 5th grade male students with a dysgraphia that had been introduced to the center of learning disability due to issues in the formal education process for the teachers in the classroom, and the specialists of the organization identified these people as having a dysgraphia. In order to performance of research, 32 male students from 3rd to 5th grade students with dysgraphia were selected through available sampling. The Minnesota handwriting skill test was then used to accurately identify students with dysgraphia (handwriting test results are also recorded as pre-test), and the Ravens color intelligence test was taken from the students (IQ above 90). They were then randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Then, each group was evaluated using Lincoln-Oseretsky for measuring motor skills and Wechsler's numerical memory test for evaluation of active memory. The exercise program included aerobic exercises, which lasted for 3 consecutive sessions each week for 12 weeks, 45 minutes per week. The training program included 5 to 10 minutes of warming, 25 minutes of aerobic exercises (step by step, step 7, rhythmic play) and 5 minutes of cool down.48 hours after the last training session in the same conditions with the control group. From all cases, the numerical memory test for active memory measurement and the Minnesota handwriting skill test were used to examine the skills of handwriting (writing) and the Linck- Ozeretsky motor efficiency test to measure motor efficiency. The results confirmed the Covariance analysis was used to analyze the data (P≤0.5). The results showed that after a rhythmic exercise period, the values of motor efficiency and active memory significantly increased, the findings also showed that rhythmic exercises had a positive effect on the skills of handwriting in students with dysgraphia. On the other hand, the results showed there is a significant relationship between active memory with scores of motor skills and writing skill. The results of handwriting regression analysis in terms of memory components and the Linck-Ozeretsky motor growth components showed that about 48 percent of the handwriting changes can be explained by the memory scores and the Linck-Ozersky growth test scores. The results of this study showed that motor skills may improve information processing and improve active memory and improve the writing scores in children with dysgraphia due to improving motor efficiency and motor – sensitive coordination. Using these exercises improves the coordination of the eyes and hands, motion sequences, physical schemas and information processing. Learning written skills is effective and feasible by performing reinforced motor skills that enhance the performance of the child. The use of such training can enhance learning and motor efficiency, improve the writing and improve the active memory of children with dysgraphia. These findings can be explained by the underlying mechanisms of brain plasticity. The hypothesis of human brain plasticity suggests that if the less active regions involved in the learning disorder are stimulated appropriately and repeatedly, these changes will remain stable due to changes that are supposed to be made in the structure of the neurons.