None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Prior studies indicate athat loneliness causes poor quality of life, impaired cognition, and disability, and increases mortality among older individuals. This study aims to determine the effects of new psychosocial group rehabilitation on the psychological well-being, cognition, subjective health, use of health services, and mortality of lonely older individuals. Social activity, depression, number of new friendships will also be investigated. Design: A randomized, controlled trial. Setting: Six communities and seven rehabilitation centres providing day care. Participants: 235 older people (>74 years) suffering from loneliness. Intervention: 15 groups comprising 7 to 8 participants and 2 professional group leaders meet once a week for 3 months 12 times in total. Group intervention aims to empower elderly people, and to promote their social integration and is based on the effects of closed group dynamics. The individuals are divided according to their interests into groups with following activities: 1) Therapeutic writing and group psychotherapy, 2) Group exercise and discussions, and 3) Art and inspiring activities. Group leaders receive thorough training and mentoring. Outcome measures: A psychological well-being score, cognition by ADAS-Cog, subjective health, depression by MADR-scale.Porportion of groups continuing their meeting after one year the official intervention is over, nuber of new friends at one year from baseline, and the use and costs of health services (at one year) and mortality (until 31.12.2005).
Interventions
Group rehabilitation in a day center (12 times once a week, 5-6 hours/day for 3 months) using group dynamics, peer support, enhancing empowerment and active agency of older people, supporting their social activation.
Sponsors
Kaisu Pitkälä
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Prevention
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
75 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
Having subjective feelings of loneliness, volunteering to participate in the group intervention and having an interest in the content offered in the rehabilitation group.
Exclusion criteria
Moderate or severe dementia (Mini-Mental State Examination25 (MMSE) < 19 points) or a Clinical Dementia Rating26 (CDR) > 1), living permanently in institutional care, blindness, deafness or the inability to move independently without another person’s aid, New York Heart Association Classification (NYHA) 27 classes 3 and 4 constituted additional exclusion criteria.Both males and females could participate.
Outcome results
None listed