Dementia Coach

Loneliness and the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

The world is no longer as it should be. People use to sit on the front porch and visit one another 1 on 1 or as a group. Where I grew up in the Midwest, people rarely left their house unlocked. You could walk in with out knocking and even help yourself to the fridge if you were hungry!

I am saddened by the number of people who have no one to visit with on a frequent basis. Even worse is the fact that some people enter into care facilities because they are lonely, especially in rural communities. The article that follows was published in 1998. How many people could have lived longer since then if they had been visited more often? Studies are now showing that socializing with others may help to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease or other types of Dementia. We already know that socializing helps to slow the progression down for those that already have it.
Many of the families I work with say that they have lost all of their friends since being diagnosed with Dementia. I believe the reason for this is out of fear. Fear of hurting their own ego or fear of hurting the other persons ego because they may just make some mistakes. Well stay tuned because help is on the way! In my next blog, I will begin to lay out for you some simple concepts of socializing. Interestingly enough, these were the same concepts we were taught in one of my first graduate level classes. How did we get so far from where we were?

One final thought for now. Did you realize that by allowing someone else to help you, you are giving them a gift!

Loneliness Health Hazard for Elderly

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Loneliness can raise the risk of nursing home admission for the elderly, according to a new study.

“Extreme loneliness was a significant predictor of admission to a nursing home among rural older men and women,” conclude researchers at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City.

Their study, appearing in the current issue of the journal Psychology and Aging, focused on the four-year histories of over 3,000 rural, elderly Iowans averaging 74 years of age at the beginning of the study (1981). The researchers used standard psychological questionnaires to assess levels of loneliness, depression, and social interaction in each of the participants.

Study subjects were then re-assessed once a year over the next four years.

They discovered that “individuals who were the most lonely… at the time of the (original) interviews were more likely to be admitted to a nursing home over the subsequent four-year period,” compared with their less-troubled peers. This effect remained even after the researchers adjusted for the incidence of other known predictors of nursing home care, including age, income, depression, mental and/or physical health status, or extent of social contacts.

The study authors speculate that loneliness might hasten nursing home admission in a variety of ways.

They point to research that suggests that “loneliness may hasten the deterioration of an individual’s health status through its (negative) impact on the immune system.” The Iowa team say chronic loneliness may also help trigger depression, “demoralization and (the) associated effects of neglect of self-care.”

Alternatively, they speculate that nursing homes may offer hope to some of the lonely elderly. Especially in rural areas (where nursing home residents and staff may already be familiar to newcomers), “those who are extremely lonely may enter a nursing home to seek companionship with others,” according to the study authors.

Study senior author Dr. Robert Wallace of the University of Iowa says “interventions to prevent loneliness should be explored in order to keep older people independent.”

He and his colleagues believe that many of elderly living in rural areas need better access to transportation so that they can more easily stay in contact with relatives and friends.

Community groups need to be encouraged as a means of bringing still-independent individuals together. Regular involvement in group activities seems to help ward off a dependence on nursing home care. For example, the investigators discovered that elderly churchgoers experienced much lower rates of nursing home admissions compared with those who did not regularly attend services.

SOURCE: Psychology and Aging (1998;12(4):574-589)