Abstract:
This thesis endeavors to investigate the impact of integrative counseling, grounded in Existential theory, on mitigating loneliness among the elderly. The study's participant pool comprises elderly individuals residing in the community of Pak Bo Temple. Both male and female participants aged 60 years and above voluntarily enrolled in the experiment. Selection criteria involved a Loneliness Test, with scores falling within the moderate range of 41 - 60 points, leading to the inclusion of 20 individuals with the highest scores.The researcher employed a matching technique to categorize them into an experimental group, consisting of 10 individuals, and a control group, also comprising 10 individuals. The research tools encompassed The Assessment of Loneliness and an Integrative Counseling Program based on Existential Theory. The program entailed 10 counseling sessions, conducted twice a week with a duration of 90 minutes each. Data collection and processing occurred during pre-experimental, post-experimental, and follow-up phases. Data analysis utilized repeated-measures analysis of variance, considering one variable between groups and one variable within groups through the Bonferroni paired test. The study's findings revealed a statistically significant interaction between the experimental method and the experimental period at the .05 level. Notably, participants who received the Integrative Counseling Program based on Existential Theory exhibited significantly lower loneliness scores than the control group in both the post-experimental and follow-up phases, with statistical significance at the .05 level. Furthermore, loneliness scores within the experimental group during both post-experimental and follow-up phases were markedly lower than those in the pre-experimental phase, reaching statistical significance at the .05 level.