Abstract:
The study purposed to explore the lived experiences of the elderly which influence their psychosocial wellbeing from selected churches in Karen-Langata, Nairobi. To achieve this goal, the study had five objectives, namely: - to explore the elderly peoples’ perception on their psychological wellbeing, to examine the elderly peoples’ perception of their social wellbeing, to investigate the perception of the elderly with reference to their subjective wellbeing, to assess the elderly peoples’ perception regarding their psychosocial wellbeing and to propose alternative policies to ameliorate the psychosocial wellbeing of this elderly population. Bowen’s Systems Theory and Eric Erickson’s theory of Human Development guided the study, which was based on a qualitative descriptive phenomenological approach. Purposeful sampling method was used to
select 11 respondents for the in-depth interviews and 12 respondents in the focus group discussions (FGD’s). The population of the study was the category of the young-old who were 60-75 years. Pan Africa University (PAC) and NACOSTI gave the researcher permission to conduct the study. Data was collected using videotape recordings and field notes. Verbatim data was transcribed, and
descriptive themes were generated to show individual perspectives. The findings of the study indicated that poor health and lack of health insurance, lack of money, death of a spouse, inheritance wrangles, children moving out of home, unfriendly neighbourhoods, cultural beliefs, loss of social networks impacted on the elderly people’s psychosocial wellbeing. The study recommends the church, National and County governments develop policies that can ameliorate the psychosocial wellbeing of the elderly and that mental health practitioners be made accessible to the elderly to help them mitigate their psychosocial wellbeing.
