Effect of Buddhist Group Counseling Program upon the Subjective Quality of Lifefor Middle Aged Woman

ABSTRACT

This study is aimed to carry out the Buddhist group counseling program structured for the middle-aged women and verify its effectiveness. The program was conducted 10 times-twice a week and 2 hours each time-for 5 weeks. Each time, the program was conducted as in the following order: meditations, suggestions of a target, activity, sharing (discussion and evaluation), lecture on a subject and final meditation. To verify the effectiveness of the program, each of 17 people was alloted randomly to the test group and the control group. And then we performed tests to detect subjective satisfaction with life, happiness, mindfulness, acceptance action, self-compassion and clinging before and after the program execution, and utilized SPSS 18.0 to analyze the effect. As a result of the program, compared with the control group, the test group who participated in the Buddhist group counseling showed the improvement of subjective satisfaction with life, happiness, mindfulness, acceptance action, and self-compassion. Also, it showed the decrease in clinging. Judging from this result, it is verified that the Buddhist group counseling program has a positive effect on the improvement in happiness of middle-aged women and in the subjective quality of life. From now on, it is needed to generalize and propagate the Buddhist group counseling program through continuous program execution for various classes and ages.