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Most Senior Citizens Experience Loneliness, Say
Researchers
Study due in January finds friends more important
to mental health than family
Nov. 21, 2005 - As the holidays approach,
loneliness becomes the spirit of Christmas present for all too many
older people. Nearly 60 percent of more than 500 senior citizens age 70
or older in this study experience some form of loneliness, according to University of
Michigan researchers. And, in a study to be released in January, they
find friendships are more important than family relationships in
predicting good mental health of seniors 60 and older.
"Loneliness is more common among older adults than
it is among younger people," said Katherine Fiori, a doctoral candidate
in developmental psychology and Daniel Katz Fellow at the U-M Institute
for Social Research (ISR).
The findings presented by Fiori, who was just named
an AARP Scholar, provide a more nuanced view of loneliness in later
life, and how it affects the health and well-being of older people.
Because of the deaths of spouses and friends, role
changes such as retirement, and deliberate attempts to "prune" their
social networks to include only people they feel close to, older adults
typically do not have as many people in their social circles as younger
people do, Fiori said. The size of the social networks among older men
and women in her study ranged from zero to 41 people, with a median of
9.5 people.
But loneliness is not a function of the number of
people in one's social network, Fiori found. "It's about how you feel
about your relationships with those people."
About 22 percent of those surveyed were emotionally
lonely, feeling alone, left out and lacking in close companionship.
About 16 percent were socially lonely, feeling that they had no one to
talk to or turn to and that they didn't really belong to any group.
Another 19 percent were isolated, experiencing both social and emotional
loneliness.
About 43 percent were connected, experiencing
neither type of loneliness.
Fiori and colleagues Jacqui Smith at the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development in Berlin and Toni Antonucci at the U-M
found that the size of the social network was not related to mental
health and subjective well-being.
In fact, emotionally lonely people with large
social networksthose who were lonely in a crowdwere slightly more
depressed and less satisfied with their lives than similarly lonely
people with small social networks. The sample used in the analysis was
drawn from the longitudinal Berlin Aging Study.
The study presented Nov. 19 at the annual meeting
of the Gerontological Society of America.
In a related study forthcoming in the January 2006
issue of the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, Fiori and
colleagues analyzed how the type of social networks older adults have is
related to their mental health.
In this study, based on a sample of 1,669 U.S.
adults age 60 and older, surveyed as part of the ISR Americans' Changing
Lives study, the researchers found that friendships were more important
than family relationships in predicting good mental health.
Even after the researchers controlled for health,
income, age and other variables, those men and women whose social
contacts were limited mainly to family members were more likely to have
symptoms of depression.
"Even though family relationships are important,
they're obligatory," Fiori said. "Friendships are optional, however, and
may help people continue to feel independent. In addition, friends seem
to provide emotional intimacy and companionship, and integration into
the community.
"For widowed men and women, friends may be
especially important in keeping loneliness and depression at bay around
the holidays."
Related links:
U-M Institute for Social Research
U-M Psychology Department
Gerontological Society of America
Established in 1948, the Institute for Social
Research (ISR) is among the world's oldest survey research
organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of
social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited
studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the
National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel
Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, and the
National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate
with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values
Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal
ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. ISR is also
home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social
Research (ICPSR), the world's largest computerized social science data
archive. Visit the ISR Web site at www.isr.umich.edu for more
information.
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