The purpose of this study is to test how the positive psychology-based group intervention program has the effect of changing depression and self-esteem of the elderly living alone. This group program added ''social network'' which emphasized in the social work practice based on the positive psychological therapy, and modified some programs considering the cognitive level of the elderly.
The experimental study is a quasi-experiment design, and designed as a non - uniform control group to evaluate the effectiveness of the program through pre-test and post-test. The subjects of this study were 20 elderly living alone, aged over 65 years, who were participating in ''the Daegu Elderly Voucher Project'', and who voluntarily participated in this study. The subjects were assigned into the experimental group and the rest into the control group. The positive psychology-based group intervention program was conducted to the experimental group for eight weeks, 90 minutes each session, once a week, while the program did not apply to the control group during that period.
The tools of studying were organized by Korean form of Geriatric Depression Scale, Self-Esteem Scale and general items. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics such as frequency analysis, X2-test, Mann- Whitney U test and Wilcoxon signed rank test through SPSS WIN 23.0 program. In addition, this study did qualitative analysis by observe the attitude change of the subjects in the experiment group.
The findings are as follows.
1. The score of depression of the experimental group who participated the positive psychology-based group intervention program significantly reduced than the comparative group(experimental group=-2.60, control group=-0.70).
2. In addition, The score of depression in the experimental group was reduced in the post-test than in the pre-test(pre-test=17.00, post-test=14.40).
3. The score of self-esteem of the experimental group who participated the positive psychology-based group intervention program was increased than the comparative group(experimental group=3.40, control group=1.10).
4. In addition, The score of self-esteem in the experimental group was increased in the post-test than in the pre-test(pre-test=23.80, post-test=27.20).
The findings from this study showed that the positive psychology-based group intervention program was effective in lowering the depression of elderly living alone and increasing self-esteem. Therefore, the collective intervention program based on the positive psychology could be used as a group counseling intervention for the elderly living alone in the social work practice in the future.