Effect of the Leisure Activities on the Level of Psychological stress among the elderly during the Coronavirus Outbreak

Abstract

Background: It is well known that advancing age is accompanied by many negative feelings due to the feeling of loneliness and psychological emptiness, which leads to the individual feeling that society does not need him due to his weak physical abilities and thus this, will negatively affect healthy aging. Objective: The study aimed to investigate the effect of the leisure activities on the psychological stress among the elderly during Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak. Design: To achieve this, we used the quasi-experimental approach on a sample consisting of 54, with the average age of (65.4±2.3) years. Divided into two groups 27 as a control group and 27 as the experimental group and this sample was purposively selected. Because of the home quarantine and to reduce face-to-face interaction, we used a questionnaire to measure the psychological stress level by using the Google form. The study tool consisted of 7 paragraphs associated with depression and 6 paragraphs associated with anxiety, finally 6 paragraphs associated with aggression. Before applying the experiment, the psychological stress was measured among the study sample, and then the leisure activities program was sent to the experimental group by the WhatsApp application. The researchers used means, standard deviations, paired and independent sample t-test by using SPSS version 24 with a confidence level of 95% (p<0.05). Results: The results of the study have shown that the level of the psychological stress among both groups came with a high average in the pre-measurement, as well as the anxiety domain that were the most affected in a positive way through leisure activities practicing. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences between the pre and post measurement among experiment group and favor of the post measurement. Conclusion: the leisure activities practicing among the elderly have contributed positively to reducing the level of psychological stress represented by depression, anxiety.