Group life review and denial of death

In order to assess the utility of structured reminiscing with the elderly a series of five Life Review Workshops (LRW) were offered. Sixty-three seniors participated in the treatment or no-treatment conditions and were administered four attitude measures pre- and post-treatment. Workshop participants also filled out a Workshop Evaluation Form. Analyses showed that the treatment group significantly decreased in denial of death (t = 2.66, p = less than .01) while the control group did not. There were also moderate but significant correlations between age, education, religiosity, and health measures and the perceived benefit accrued from the workshop, the amount of reminiscing which participants reported after completing the workshop, and the number of functions which reminiscing served for LRW members.