A Review of Social Isolation: An Important but Underassessed Condition in Older Adults

J Primary Prevent (2012) 33:137152 DOI 10.1007/s10935-012-0271-2

LITERATURE REVIEW

A Review of Social Isolation: An Important but Underassessed Condition in Older Adults

Nicholas R. Nicholson

Published online: 6 July 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract Social isolation is a major and prevalent health problem among community-dwelling older adults, leading to numerous detrimental health conditions. With a high prevalence, and an increasing number of older persons, social isolation will impact the health, well-being, and quality of life of numerous older adults now and in the foreseeable future. For this review, a series of literature searches of the CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Medline databases were conducted, using the key words social isolation, social networks, older adults, elderly, belonging, perceived isolation, social engagement, social contacts, and social integration, for the period of 19952010. The results show that there is an overabundance of evidence demonstrating numerous negative health outcomes and potential risk factors related to social isolation. However, there is scarce evidence that public health professionals are assessing social isolation in older persons, despite their unique access to very socially isolated, homebound older adults. Additionally, few viable interventions were found; therefore, it is advisable to focus on the prevention of social isolation in older adults. Public health professionals can take steps toward increasing the early assessment of social isolation and referring at-risk individuals to available community resources in order to prevent social isolation

or further isolation, which would serve to reduce the numerous negative health outcomes associated with this condition.

Keywords Social isolation Social networks

Older adults Aging Geriatrics Review

Introduction

Social isolation is a major health problem for older adults living in the community, leading to numerous detrimental health conditions. Social isolation is dened as a state in which the individual lacks a sense of belonging socially, lacks engagement with others, has a minimal number of social contacts and they are decient in fullling and quality relationships (Nicholson, 2009,p. 1346). Current estimates of the prevalence of social isolation in community-dwelling older adults indicate that it is as high as 43 %, ranging from 10 to 43 % (Nicholson, Molony, Fennie, Shellman, & McCorkle, 2010; Smith & Hirdes, 2009). Social isolation has been demonstrated to lead to numerous detrimental health effects in older adults including increased risk for all-cause...