Quality of Life of Elderly People with Varying Degrees of Openness

The research is devoted to the problem of life quality at elderly people. The process of population ageing led to the growth of number of elderly people and updated the problems of this age as a subject of scientific research. Our main objective was to study the interrelation of quality of life with indicators of openness and closeness of an elderly person. Studying the indicator of openness and closeness, according to the methodology of system anthropological psychology (V.E. Klochko) was carried out on the basis of the analysis of phenomenology of openness to itself and to external environment (social, natural, cultural). The studied group of respondents, elderly people, according to the results of cluster analysis of indicators of openness and closeness, was not consistent. Three cluster groups with statistically significant distinctions were allocated. These distinctions indicate the features of the vital world of elderly people, their readiness to self-organization as an open psychological system. We have allocated three types of the vital world organization according to the features of openness and closeness to themselves, to the social, objective and natural world. These are a more open type, a closed to the social world type, and a closed to itself type. The revealed types allow considering the indicators of quality of life (a psychological component) and openness/closeness as important criteria for evaluation of subjective life quality at elderly people. The rehabilitation potential has to be considered as a development vector while the difficulties of self-development as an open circuit established in the research and shown in interaction with the social, objective and natural world should become a subject for prevention and correction. The obtained new scientific data can be used in the development of crisis psychological assistance to elderly people.

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