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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Loneliness and the health of older people | | Author(s) | Conor O Luanaigh, Brian A Lawlor |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 23, no 12, December 2008 |
| Pages | pp 1213-1221 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com |
| Keywords | Loneliness ; Health [elderly] ; Depression ; Psychiatric treatment ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | The intense focus of major psychiatric disorders in both contemporary psychiatric research and clinical practice has resulted in constructs such as loneliness and how such entities might affect health outcomes being relatively neglected. This review aims to raise awareness among physicians and psychiatrists of the medical impact and biological effects of loneliness, as well as making the argument that loneliness should be a legitimate therapeutic target. The authors used Pubmed to search for research and review papers looking at loneliness as a construct, how it is measured, and its health effects. A review of the relevant papers finds that loneliness has strong association with depression and may in fact be an independent risk factor for depression. Furthermore, loneliness appears to have a significant impact on physical health, being linked detrimentally to higher blood pressure, worse sleep, immune stress responses and worse cognition over time in older people. There is a relative deficiency in adequate evidence-based treatments for loneliness. Loneliness is common in older people and is associated with adverse health consequences both from a mental and physical health point of view. There needs to be an increased focus on initiating intervention strategies targeting loneliness, to determine if increasing loneliness can improve quality of life and functioning in older people. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-090402202 A |
| Classmark | DV: CC: ENR: LP: 64A |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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