Is there a relationship between grandparents’ forgiveness and their subjective mental health?

Abstract

Introduction. Recent research findings demonstrate positive relationship between forgiveness and mental health (Geurts, Tilburg,Poortman, 2011). Still, relationship between family members may be rather challenging (Carr, Wang, 2012) and causing mental andemotional strain. When communicating with grandchildren grandparents may experience both positive and negative interactions,nevertheless forgiveness/unforgiveness has scarcely been analysed in relation to communication with grandchildren.Purpose. The aim of research was to determine the role of grandparents’ forgiveness and communication with their grandchildren onsubjective mental health.Methods. Research participants were 343 grandparents (79.6 per cent of women and 20.4 per cent of men), aged 40 – 89. Subjectivemental health was measured by the Complete Mental Health questionnaire (Keys, 2005), and forgiveness was measured by the HeartlandForgiveness Scale (HFS) (Thompson, Snyder, 2003).The results of the research revealed that inability of men to forgive was related to their worse subjective mental health. Whereas theworse subjective mental health among women was related to less frequent meetings with their grandchildren, lower education, inability toforgive and older age. The results demonstrated that meetings with grandchildren were not related to grandfathers’ subjective mentalhealth. However, grandmothers who met with their grandchildren more often tended to have better subjective mental health.In conclusion, grandparents’ better subjective mental health was predicted by more frequent meetings and communication with theirclosest grandchild, lower inability of forgiveness, higher education and younger age of grandparents. These findings call for more researchin revealing grandparent-grandchildren relationship.