How elderly nursing home residents transcend losses of later life.
For many nursing home residents, life is experienced as a series of losses ranging from bereavement to the inability to travel outside the home independently. So researchers have increasingly focused on how older people use their internal resources, such as a sense of spirituality, to come to terms with these multiple losses. In this American study, secondary data from a larger study of health care promotion in long-term care facilities was re-analysed to discover if the interviews showed evidence of what the researchers call 'self-transcendence'. This gave a sample of 95 residents, with an age range of 65 to 103 years (mean 82.16). Content analysis generated several themes drawn from Reed's theory of self-transcendence, including generativity, introjectivity, temporal integration, body- transcendence, and relationship with self, others and a higher being. As one older person said, 'I just live day by day … you never know for sure when He wants you home'.