As I walked back
to my car, after setting up the workshop I passed a lady and she said, “Good
Morning”, I replied, “Good Morning and how are you doing?” She looked at me and frowned and
just said: “I’m alive”. I deposited some material in the car and went back to the
center where I was giving a workshop on “Common skin conditions for seniors”. When I walked into the room, the woman I had
passed was sitting in the front row. She looked at me and said, “You are giving
the workshop?” I said, “Yes, and I am glad you are alive to be here for it.”
She laughed and the other 14 people at my workshop looked at her and then I left the
room for a second, but when I came back she and other people in the workshop were laughing.
As I was leaving,
after the workshop, I took a look around the center. There was a dozen or so
people in the Billiard room, the small cafeteria was almost full, I could hear,
but could not see the people in the auditorium exercising, the card room was
buzzing and the lawn bowling courts (all 4) were full of teams enjoying the
nice weather. There was also a number of people just watching. I was struck by
the energy in the center and the good feeling of the group. Loneliness is a problem
for many seniors, but it did not appear to be a problem for the people I saw
this morning.
CARP, is one of Canada’s
largest advocacy group for older Canadians, it surveyed its members in 2017 to
find out about their social environment, contact with people, age, health,
access to public services, and family situations and analyzed the
correlation between these factors with feelings of loneliness and isolation.
Here are some of
the findings:
•
People who were married were far less likely to be
lonely and were far less socially isolated than those who were not married.
•
Access to public services reducing loneliness far more
then the effects of having children or grandchildren.
•
Those who rated the transit they had access to as
‘high-quality’ were far less lonely; this effect was about half the size of the
effect of being married.
The members said
that living near parks, community (senior) centers, libraries and high-quality
transit helped their quality of life and helped combat loneliness.
Loneliness Affects
People’s Health More than Age
The survey found
that people who are lonelier or have less social contact are also likely to
report lower levels of general health, and are more likely to report that they
are sicker than they were one year ago.
Surprisingly,
loneliness impacts people’s description of their overall health more than twice
as much as being older. The impact of loneliness is also about one third larger
then the effect of socio-economic status, which public health research has long
established as an important predictor of health outcomes.
CARP’s social
isolation and loneliness survey was completed by 5,308 CARP members from every
province and territory, except Nunavut. This poll was conducted by e-mail from
April 17, 2017, to March 1th, 2017. 99.4% of respondents were over 55.
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