practical living
Loneliness on the rise
An aged-care provider has called for an increased focus on the problem of social isolation, after a report found a surge in disconnection among older people.
Karn Nelson interviewed by Dallas Bastian
Half of Australians aged 65 or older have experienced feelings of loneliness, new research has revealed.
About 1.7 million participants of the study said they had felt lonely, up by almost 300,000 since the survey was last conducted in 2015.
The Social Isolation and Loneliness Report was conducted by Galaxy Research on behalf of aged-care provider the Whiddon Group, which said a key factor in this result was 4 in 10 respondents feeling cut off from society and their local community.
Karn Nelson, executive general manager of strategic policy and research at Whiddon, says despite technological advancements and an increasing focus on loneliness and social isolation, the issues are not going to be resolved without addressing them directly and providing practical solutions.
Aged Care Insite sits down with Nelson to discuss the report and find out what Whiddon is doing to address social isolation and loneliness across its facilities.
ACI: Why did Whiddon decide to conduct this research? KN: As a care provider, we are very aware of [ the wealth of ] evidence behind the link between social isolation, loneliness and poor health outcomes. For example, loneliness has pretty severe implications for depression, for levels of dementia, among those who suffer it, for stroke and cardiovascular health.
A recent study was able to prove that being lonely is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic.
So there were some very tangible and physical reasons as to why you would want to [ investigate this issue ]. [ You are looking after people’ s wellbeing and ] you’ re trying to keep them connected, and making sure that you can enable them to overcome isolation, and find other ways to feel engaged in their communities.
Whiddon has conducted this research two years in a row. What were some of the findings that struck you about the most recent report? It wasn’ t exactly the same survey, because there was some new things that we wanted to survey in this last iteration. What was disturbing was that we saw the overall levels of loneliness rise – so people identifying themselves in that plus-65 age category as feeling lonely either some or all of the time had risen to 50 per cent of those surveyed. That compares to around 45 per cent in the survey that we conducted in 2015. That was a rise of about 17 per cent.
In what other ways does the data in the 2016 report compare to previous findings? There were some similarities, as you’ d expect – the importance of being connected to your community, as a way of combating loneliness and social isolation. In this survey, we made the distinction between loneliness and isolation, whereas in the previous survey we just asked about perceptions of loneliness.
So we did get over 40 per cent of that plus-65 population [ saying ] that they felt isolated from their community, which is a very high figure. Some of the key reasons for feeling isolated were reflected across both surveys – things like not knowing enough people in the community, not having enough, or not being able to find information around what services are available in the community. Transport was another key one, and poor health limiting your ability to get out and about.
20 agedcareinsite. com. au