The effectiveness of behavioral activation intervention on increasing self-care behaviors and psychological well-being of the elderly

Background: Considering the growing trend of the elderly population in Iran, problems related to their care and health, attention to psychological treatments, and issues such as self-care behaviors and psychological well-being are important.Therefore, the aim of this research was to the effectiveness of behavioral activation intervention on increasing self-care behaviors and psychological well-being of the elderly. Materials and methods:The current study was a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design with a 2-month follow-up and a control group.Among all the elderly people aged 65-90 who visited the communication center in Saeed Abad town in 2023, 40 people were selected by convenience sampling and assigned into 2 groups of experimental and control.The self-care questionnaire of Hemmati Maslak Pak et al (2015) and the psychological well-being scale of Ryff (1989) were used to collect data at three time points: pre-test, post-test, and follow-up.The experimental group received 8 sessions of Kanter et al.'s (2009) behavioral activation intervention protocol.The data were analyzed using univariate covariance analysis (ANCOVA) by SPSS-26 software.Results: There was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of self-care behaviors (F=46.18)and psychological well-being (F=54.74).These results were consistent after a 2-month follow-up (P<0.001).After receiving the behavioral activation intervention, the experimental group showed significant improvements in both self-care behaviors and psychological well-being.Conclusion: This study suggests that a behavioral activation intervention can be an effective method for improving the self-care behaviors and psychological well-being of elderly individuals.