Effectiveness of Horticulture Activities on Distress Tolerance and Digit Memory in Older Adults Living in Nursing Home

Background : Today, as a result of increasing the life expectancy, there is a great interest in improving the distress tolerance in older adults. Given that helping to prevent memory loss and distress tolerance are important issues in older adults, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of horticultural activities on the distress tolerance and digit memory of the older adult living in Mobarakeh nursing home. Methods: The statistical population of the study consisted of all the older adults in Mobarakeh city of Isfahan province in 2020. The present study is a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test in which the experimental and control groups were used. The study sample consisted of 30 older adults who were selected nonrandom, in convenience method among the older adults of Mobarakeh city and were randomized divided into two groups of 15 people (control and experimental groups). The experimental group performed horticultural activities in five sessions (90 minutes per sessions) and the control group performed routine activities. After horticultural activities, the participants were asked to answer the questionnaires in post-test stage. The instruments were two questionnaires: Distress Tolerance Questionnaire, Simmons and Gahr (DTS) (2005), Digit memory subscale of Wechsler Memory Scale (Form A) Blauer (1939).Data analysis was performed at two levels of descriptive and inferential statistics using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) using SPSS-16. Findings: In the present study, 70% of participants were married and 46.76% were illiterate. The results showed that horticultural activities are effective on distress tolerance (tolerating emotional distress, being absorbed by negative emotions, mentally estimating distress, and adjusting efforts to relieve distress) of the older adults(p<0.05) but horticultural activities were not effective on digit memory (direct and inverse digits) of the older adults(p>0.05). Conclusion: In sum it can be concluded that horticultural activities can be used as the effective methods to improving the distress tolerance (being absorbed by negative emotions and mentally estimating distress) in the older adults.