comparison of happiness and spiritual well-being among the community dwelling elderly and those who lived in sanitariums

background: several studies are available on the lifestyle, psychological and mental health of the elderly adults. this study aimed to compare the spiritual well-being and happiness in the elderly who lived in sanitariums with those lived in the community. methods: a comparative study was conducted on 384 elderly adults. a census sampling was used in sanitariums and a convenience sampling was performed to select the community dwelling (cd) older adults. a demographic questionnaire, the pauloutzian and ellison’s spiritual well-being scale and the oxford happiness questionnaire were used in this study. descriptive statistics and kolmogorov-smirnov, chi-square and mann-whitney u tests and spearman correlation coefficient were employed for data analysis, using the spss software, version 13.0. results: from the total participants, 56% were cd elderly and 44% were in sanitariums. among the cd older adults, no one was at a high level of spiritual well-being while in sanitariums 24.4% were at a high level of spiritual well-being. also, 71.2% of the community dwelling older adults were at a high level of happiness while only 3.6% of those living in sanitariums expressed a high level of happiness. a significant association was found between the level of spiritual well-being and happiness in those who lived in sanitariums (r=0.177, p<0.021). conclusion: most of the elderly living in the community and in sanitariums showed moderate spiritual well-being and low happiness. therefore, nurses and health authorities are responsible not only to inform the community about the importance of spiritual well-being and happiness, but also to establish some strategies in this regard.