Interventions to address social connectedness and loneliness for older adults: a scoping review.
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TLDR
Innovative conceptualizations of intervention targets are needed, such as purposeful activity, that move beyond the current focus on the objective social network as a way to promote social connectedness for older adults.Abstract:
Older adults are at risk for loneliness, and interventions to promote social connectedness are needed to directly address this problem. The nature of interventions aimed to affect the distinct, subjective concepts of loneliness/social connectedness has not been clearly described. The purpose of this review was to map the literature on interventions and strategies to affect loneliness/social connectedness for older adults. A comprehensive scoping review was conducted. Six electronic databases were searched from inception in July 2015, resulting in 5530 unique records. Standardized inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied, resulting in a set of 44 studies (reported in 54 articles) for further analysis. Data were extracted to describe the interventions and strategies, and the context of the included studies. Analytic techniques included calculating frequencies, manifest content analysis and meta-summary. Interventions were described or evaluated in 39 studies, and five studies described strategies to affect loneliness/social connectedness of older adults or their caregivers in a qualitative descriptive study. The studies were often conducted in the United States (38.6%) among community dwelling (54.5%), cognitively intact (31.8%), and female-majority (86.4%) samples. Few focused on non-white participants (4.5%). Strategies described most often were engaging in purposeful activity and maintaining contact with one’s social network. Of nine intervention types identified, the most frequently described were One-to-One Personal Contact and Group Activity. Authors held divergent views of why the same type of intervention might impact social connectedness, but social contact was the most frequently conceptualized influencing factor targeted, both within and across intervention types. Research to test the divergent theories of why interventions work is needed to advance understanding of intervention mechanisms. Innovative conceptualizations of intervention targets are needed, such as purposeful activity, that move beyond the current focus on the objective social network as a way to promote social connectedness for older adults.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Social Connection in Long-Term Care Homes: A Scoping Review of Published Research on the Mental Health Impacts and Potential Strategies During COVID-19.
Jennifer Bethell,Jennifer Bethell,Katelynn Aelick,Jessica Babineau,Monica Bretzlaff,Cathleen Edwards,Josie Lee Gibson,Debbie Hewitt Colborne,Andrea Iaboni,Dee Lender,Denise Schon,Katherine S. McGilton +11 more
TL;DR: Observational and intervention studies provide some evidence on approaches to address social connection in this population of LTC residents, and it does not obviate the need to act given the sudden and severe impact of COVID-19.
Journal ArticleDOI
Loneliness from young adulthood to old age: Explaining age differences in loneliness:
TL;DR: House income, household size, marital status, health, and frequency of socializing were “universal” predictors of loneliness; their associations with loneliness did not differ in strength with age; the hypothesis that individuals who deviated from age-specific norms would experience more intense loneliness was not supported.
Journal ArticleDOI
Aging and Feeling Valued Versus Expendable During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond: a Review and Commentary of Why Mattering Is Fundamental to the Health and Well-Being of Older Adults.
Gordon L. Flett,Marnin J. Heisel +1 more
TL;DR: The current commentary and review examines the potentially protective role of feelings of mattering among elderly people during typical times and the current atypical times associated with the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Journal ArticleDOI
An Evaluation of a Low-Intensity Cognitive Behavioral Therapy mHealth-Supported Intervention to Reduce Loneliness in Older People
TL;DR: LI-CBT delivered via instant messaging may be effective in reducing loneliness experienced by older people, especially in residential care settings.
Journal ArticleDOI
A systematic review of interventions for loneliness among older adults living in long-term care facilities.
TL;DR: Laughter therapy, horticultural therapy, and reminiscence therapy were associated with the greatest decreases in loneliness, and there are several effective interventions to reduce loneliness among older adults living in LTC facilities.
References
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Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework
Hilary Arksey,Lisa O'Malley +1 more
TL;DR: A framework for conducting a scoping study is outlined based on recent experiences of reviewing the literature on services for carers for people with mental health problems and it is suggested that a wider debate is called for about the role of the scoped study in relation to other types of literature reviews.
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Scoping studies: advancing the methodology
TL;DR: Specific recommendations to clarify and enhance this methodology are outlined for each stage of the Arksey and O'Malley framework, to support the advancement, application and relevance of scoping studies in health research.
Book
Loneliness: the experience of emotional and social isolation
TL;DR: Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation brings together papers which attempt to capture the phenomena of loneliness with case materials that illuminate the descriptive and theoretical acccounts as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Meta-Analysis of Interventions to Reduce Loneliness:
TL;DR: An integrative meta-analysis of loneliness reduction interventions was conducted to quantify the effects of each strategy and to examine the potential role of moderator variables, and revealed that single-group pre-post and nonrandomized comparison studies yielded larger mean effect sizes relative to randomized comparison studies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Measuring belongingness: The Social Connectedness and the Social Assurance scales.
Richard M. Lee,Steven B. Robbins +1 more
TL;DR: This paper developed two measures of belongingness based on H. Kohut's self psychology theory, the Social Connectedness Scale and the Social Assurance Scale, which were constructed with a split-sample procedure on 626 college students.