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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The heterogeneity of socially isolated older adults
— a social isolation typology | | Author(s) | Anja Machielse |
| Journal title | Journal of Gerontological Social Work, vol 58, no 4, May-June 2015 |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis, May-June 2015 |
| Pages | pp 338-356 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Isolation [elderly] ; Loneliness ; Living alone ; At risk ; Therapeutics. |
| Annotation | Recent statistics show a growing number of older adults who are living alone and are socially isolated. It is against this background that, in recent years, many interventions have been developed to address social isolation among older people. However evaluative studies show that most interventions are ineffective, an important reason being the heterogeneity or diversity of the socially isolated. This article offers insight into this heterogeneity by presenting a typology with different profiles of socially isolated older adults and the intervention implications of this typology. The typology is derived from an extensive qualitative study on socially isolated older individuals in the Netherlands. The typology imposes some degree of order to a diversity of circumstances, ambitions and possibilities of the socially isolated older population, thereby deepening the understanding of the heterogeneity of this group. The definition of social isolation used in this study starts from a societal angle of incidence, namely the current policy context of Western European welfare states in which governments emphasise the importance of independence and self-reliance of their citizens. Developed from that perspective, the typology provides a theoretical basis for applying interventions aimed at increasing self-reliance among socially isolated older people. This perspective on social isolation also has consequences for the way in which the effectiveness of interventions to alleviate social isolation is assessed. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150619217 A |
| Classmark | F:TP: DV: K8: CA3: LL |
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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