Examining the relationship between psychological well-being of male prisoners with forgiveness and hope

The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between the psychological well-being of male prisoners staying in Maltepe Open Penal Institution and forgiveness and hope. The research method is the correlational research model, which is one of the quantitative research methods. The sample of the research consists of 245 male prisoners staying in Maltepe Open Penal Institution. The data were collected face to face between July 2023 and December 2023. Personal Information Form, Psychological Well-Being Scale, Forgiveness Tendency Scale and Continuous Hope Scale were used as data collection tools in the research. The data were analyzed using the SPSS program. One Way ANOVA analysis was used to determine the relationship between psychological well-being levels and marital status and between psychological well-being level and educational status. Accordingly, the level of psychological well-being of the prisoners is statistically significantly higher in the married than in the single prisoners, and in the divorced than in the single prisoners. No significant difference was found between psychological well-being level and educational status. Pearson Correlation analysis was applied to determine the relationship between psychological well-being and their ages. No significant relationship was found as a result of the analysis. Pearson Correlation analysis was performed to determine the relationships between the variables of psychological well-being, forgiveness and hope. In addition, stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to determine the extent to which psychological well-being was predicted by forgiveness and hope. A positive, weak and significant relationship was found between the psychological well-being levels of prisoners and their tendency to forgive. When the relationship between psychological well-being levels and hope levels was examined, a positive, moderate and significant relationship was found. The relationship between the hope levels of prisoners and their tendency to forgive was not found to be significant. The hope levels and forgiveness tendencies of prisoners significantly predict their psychological well-being. In the first stage of the multiple regression analysis, the hope level variable was included in the analysis as the most explanatory factor of the variance in the psychological well-being of prisoners and explained 19.4% of the total variance. In the second stage, in addition to the level of hope, the tendency to forgive variable was included in the analysis, and the two variables together explained 24.9% of the total variance of the psychological well-being score. As a result, it is seen that the hope levels and tendency to forgive of the prisoners make a significant contribution to explaining their psychological well-being.