Death anxiety and interment stress family interventions for Filipino older adults

Objective: The overall intent of this conjoint analysis study is to explicate family intervention preferences of the respondents (aged 18-75) to assist Filipino Older adults in coping with death anxiety and interment stress. 

Background: Distressing life circumstances such as death and interment are better coped with family interventions. There have been numerous studies on how family interventions assist in the treatment of physiological and mental illnesses, but there is a continuing research imperative to empirically establish specific family interventions which are holistic and appropriate in cultural and social contexts. 

Method: Conjoint analysis was utilized to identify the preferred family intervention measures. A total of 214 adults from the most populous group of islands in the Philippines qualified in the inclusion criteria and after the ethical clearance was obtained, the recruitment started via snowball sampling, following the inclusion criteria set in this research. The demographic details were utilized for the descriptive and inferential statistics of this study, and the orthogonal plan cards were generated via SPSS software to create the orthogonal profiles.

Results: The outcomes of the statistics demonstrated that the conjoint model performed for this study was considerably fit: Pearson’s R is .670, p<.01, Kendall’s Tau is .487, p<.05. Results showed that the cognitive state (23.272%) is the most important and the spiritual state (17.256%) as the least important attribute of family interventions. Part-worth of family interventions showed favoring the following: Medical routines and procedures (.342) for the physical state; mental health awareness (.266) for mental state; livelihood trainings (.051) for social state; family therapy (.022) for psychological state; and church activities (.017) for the spiritual state. The correlation analysis showed that the spiritual state is significantly correlated with age (r = 0.151, p < 0.05) and number of children (r = 0.143, p < 0.05).

Conclusion: This conjoint analysis study provided empirical evidence for identifying preferences of family intervention measures in a holistic perspective by combining physical, mental, social, psychological and spiritual attributes. The findings rendered a multi-modal structure to cope with death anxiety and interment stress that will have a significant bearing in the overall care of the older adult in the family and improve family dynamics. 

Implications: The findings will subscribe to the knowledge base useful in family theories and relations, developmental psychology, ageing studies, gerontological psychology and educational gerontology. Moreover, the significant findings will greatly contribute in implementing effective psychosocial and psychoeducational strategies towards the mental health care of the older adult population.