It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Or is it? For many people, especially older adults, the holiday season sheds a glaring light on loneliness and isolation. Both can take a dramatic toll on their health.
U.S. health officials call it the “loneliness epidemic,” with 43 percent of seniors saying that they feel lonely on a regular basis. Some studies show that seniors who experience loneliness have a 45 percent increased risk of mortality, and that loneliness is linked to increased risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and mental and cognitive decline.
Loneliness also is found to lead to unhealthy behaviors including poor diet, smoking and lack of physical activity. It fuels a further decline to poor health and increased isolation. It’s a sad cycle that I have often seen during my time working as a nursing home administrator, but loneliness isn’t isolated to any one setting. It affects seniors aging in the community as well as those living in facilities.
In New Jersey, state lawmakers have introduced a bill to better understand the loneliness epidemic in our seniors, as well as other groups that also are vulnerable to isolation including veterans, people with disabilities and those with mental illness. We at the New Jersey Hospital Association applaud the bill’s champions Sen. Joe Cryan and Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker not only for their compassion, but also for their awareness of the undeniable link between social isolation and health. The bill calls for the creation of a task force and a statewide review of social isolation in New Jersey, along with recommended solutions to address the problem for these most vulnerable New Jerseyans.
The healthcare community knows that many factors such as safe housing, transportation, good nutrition and, yes, human connections, are essential for older adults to remain healthy. That’s the impetus behind a new initiative at the Hospital Association called PaTH, or Partnerships Transforming Health. We know there’s an especially vulnerable group of senior citizens – those who are discharged from a hospital or nursing home stay or emergency room visit without assistance from support services funded by Medicare such as home health or rehabilitation services. For those seniors, this pilot program will bring hospitals and community-based organizations together to improve collaboration so that older adults are connected to the support services they need.
One particularly sad statistic I read from a study in the United Kingdom is that an estimated 225,000 seniors in that nation go an entire week without talking to anyone. It’s hard for me to shake that image as the rest of us go about our busy lives. So, during the holidays and beyond, let’s reach out to the seniors in our lives. A visit, a warm touch or a phone call can chip away at the loneliness epidemic, one human connection at a time.
Theresa Edelstein, MPH, LNHA, is senior vice president of the Center for Partnerships Transforming Health at the New Jersey Hospital Association.
