Loneliness, Social Isolation
Conditions
Keywords
Loneliness, Social isolation, Depression, Older adults, Social competence, Social integration
Brief summary
The purposes of this study are: (1) decrease loneliness and social isolation and increase social competence and social integration of older adults experiencing loneliness; (2) examine an intervention process grounded in a theoretical model that was developed in a previous study. The intervention process is tailored to the participants' barriers and abilities, and includes up to 10 personal meetings with an activities counselor and several group meetings.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALI-SOCIAL intervention
The I-SOCIAL intervention is based on findings from Cohen-Mansfield and Parpura-Gill (2007), which highlighted the important role of barriers in contributing to loneliness in older persons. These barriers include a perceived lack of opportunities for social contacts, low social self-efficacy, and health and mobility difficulties. The intervention includes: (1) identifying the barriers for the specific person; (2) up to 10 meetings with an activities counselor. The meetings include discussions concerning options for social contacts and use of techniques and resources to tackle the barriers; and (3) group meetings of participants and the activities counselors in order to provide a concrete social event and as a venue to discuss barriers and ways to address them.
Sponsors
Ministry for Senior Citizens, Israel
Tel Aviv University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
65 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* age 65 or over * residing in the Tel Aviv region
Exclusion criteria
* having known mental illness including schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and dementia
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in Loneliness | Participants will be assessed before and after the intervention, an expected average of 6 months | Loneliness will be assessed via several measures: (a) Frequency of loneliness will be measured via one item (How often would you say you feel lonely?; (Mullins, Woodland, & Putnam, 1990) on a 6-point scale from never (1) to several times an hour (6); (b) The UCLA Loneliness Scale- 8 items (ULS-8; (Hays & DiMatteo, 1987). Each item is rated on a 5-point scale from not at all (1) to to a great extent (5), with a higher score indicating more loneliness. Based on experience from another study (Cohen-Mansfield et al., 2013) one item (I am unhappy being so withdrawn) was replaced with two items (I feel physically distant from other people; I feel emotionally distant from other people). |
Countries
Israel
Outcome results
None listed