Forgiveness: It’s relation with psychological well-being and psychological distress among old age women

Pages:340-343
Momina Abid and Shamsa Hussain (Department of Applied Psychology, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan)

Forgiveness is the positive characteristic of human nature. Psychological benefits are also the gift of forgiveness. The people who forgive more easily are less psychologically distressed and more likely to be happy. The present study aimed to explore the correlational aspects of forgiveness, psychological well-being and psychological distress among married and single old age women. The sample of research was comprised of 120 women (85 married and 35 single), was taken from Edhi centerof Multan, Muzaffargarh and kabirwala through simple random sampling. Heartland Forgiveness Scale (Thompson et al., 2005) were used to measure dispositional forgiveness and Mental Health Inventory (Viet & Ware, 1983) was used to measure psychological well-being and psychological distress. Data analyze through SPSS 20 version. Result indicated that forgiveness has significant positive correlation with psychological well-being, and negative correlation with psychological distress. Findings of the research revealed that marital status of old age women were significant determinant of forgiveness and psychological distress but no significant differences on psychological well-being. The core component of psychological well-being is forgiveness and psychological distress is due to unforgiving nature.This study implies that embrace forgiveness can lead to peace, happiness and psychological well-being and defeat to negative emotions and psychological distress.