A lonely older man
One of the various lessons we must always have learned from the Covid-19 pandemic is the toll that loneliness and social isolation tackle older people. Nearly 900,000 older adults died Tens of hundreds became sick from the virus and could have died attributable to the isolation brought on by the pandemic.
But what have we learned from this tragic experience? Whether older people live of their old homes, senior living communities or nursing homes, we proceed to struggle to get them to socialize with others.
A widespread problem
The Covid tragedy has drawn attention to the issue. And now several organizations are in search of solutions. Few are particularly unconventional. But that just about doesn’t matter. What’s essential is that the solutions are getting the much-needed attention.
These feelings of isolation and loneliness amongst older individuals are nothing recent. Even before the pandemic, about 28 percent of seniors said they felt alone. And a separate study by the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health The study found that a couple of quarter of older adults felt socially isolated, while about 4 percent, or a million seniors, were “severely socially isolated.”
And the results? comprehensive study of older adults The study found that those with the very best levels of loneliness were almost twice as prone to die between 2002 and 2008 as those with low levels of loneliness, even after controlling for demographic aspects, income, marital status and health behaviors akin to smoking.
Then the pandemic got here and made all the pieces worse.
Highlighting solutions
In January, the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) brought together 70 experts from across the country to work together to seek out solutions. Last month, the group summarized its Recommendations in a report. This work follows a series of educational studies, the 2020 National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine study entitled Social isolation and loneliness in older adultsand appointed Surgeon General of the United States in 2023 Advice on the healing effects of social contacts and community.
All differ in some ways. For example, the NASEM report highlighted the role of health care professionals. The Surgeon General focused on the population as a complete, not only older adults. But all pointed in the identical general direction. Crucially, all view loneliness as a public health problem.
Linking medicine and social support
The recent publication from the New York Academy of Medicine accommodates several essential recommendations:
First, it highlights the importance of identifying isolated older people – a vital first step before providing help – after which rethinking care models to incorporate efforts to assist people maintain or restore social contacts.
It recognises the essential role that community-based organisations that provide look after older people (e.g. Meals on Wheels) can play, but more funding is required to offer this extra work, the study concludes.
General practitioners, hospitals and the total spectrum of senior living services also play an important role in identifying and supporting those affected by social isolation.
For physicians, assessing isolation and loneliness requires time, training and resources, in addition to a brand new mindset. Primary care physicians must recognize that for a lot of patients, strengthening social support is no less than as essential as traditional medical interventions.
Care settings akin to hospitals and nursing homes must recognize loneliness as a condition that requires intervention, even when these interventions are prone to be social slightly than medical in nature and generally are usually not directly reimbursed by Medicare.
How you will help
What can specifically help people who find themselves socially isolated?
The NYAM report described a New York City initiative called DOROTwhich involves 1,500 youth and young adults and 700 older adults in a wide range of volunteer initiatives. (Full disclosure: I serve on the board of one other community organization that connects older adults and school-age children with intergenerational programs.)
The key to such programs is to involve older people themselves as volunteers and not only as recipients of help. A review of greater than 30 studies in several countries found that volunteering reduces depression in older adults.
Other suggestions from NYAM include improving measurement and data collection to higher understand the prevalence of loneliness amongst older people and its consequences; involving older people themselves within the design of research (and, I would add, in the event of solutions); and making higher use of technology (although I have to be considered a skeptic on this point).
The specific recommendations from the NYAM, the Surgeon General, and the National Academies are useful. But more essential is the easy recognition by these groups that hundreds of thousands of older Americans suffer from social isolation and loneliness. And that these conditions are manageable.
Social isolation and loneliness is not going to be truly addressed until medical and social service providers work together to combat them. And the NYAM report is just the newest call from a corporation trusted by physicians, payers and health systems to just do that.
