Meaning reconstruction of elderly happiness in nursing home: A case study in Indonesia

The elderly have become one of the crucial issues faced by many countries in the world today. The composition of the elderly population is overgrowing in both developed and developing countries. This also happens in Indonesia. This phenomenon is growing faster than that of other age groups. The increase in the number of elderly requires attention so that they not only live longer but can enjoy their old age happily and improve the quality of their life. The elderly now prefers to live in nursing homes (NH). An ongoing change puts the elderly at the option of living in a nursing home. This study attempts to investigate factors causing the elderly to live in NH, how the elderly's life satisfaction is, and how the elderly view happiness. This study employed a qualitative approach. In collecting the data, observation and in-depth interviews were used to dig up information and focus group discussions with several informants consisting of the elderly and elderly officers with a total of 15-20 people. From the results of the study, it was found that the reason of elderly live in NH includes nonexisting communities that can provide housing and livelihood assistance, the difficulty of the relationship between old age and family in place during his stay, and the financial or economic inability of the family to guarantee a decent livelihood. Then, it was also found that the elderly view happiness as the presence of leisure activities. True present-day happiness can be achieved by achieving as many activities as possible that are more gratified than pleasure.