You’ve probably heard this story: There once was a man who lived next to a deep, fast river. One day saw a child struggling, caught in the current. Without hesitation, he dived in and after much effort pulled the child ashore. Exhausted, they lay on the bank recovering, and he felt happy he had been able to save the child. However, the next day the same thing happened, and the next day again. As this continued the man, gradually became more and more worn out and frustrated. Then one day it stopped. The man walked upstream and came across a farmer who was finishing mending the fence between the river and the school. From then on children no longer needed to be rescued and the man, who still wanted to help, spent his time checking the fences remained in place and teaching the children to swim.
What this story, rather bluntly, illustrates is that our time and energy can often be more usefully be spent further upstream, addressing issues where they are still manageable and helping people to use their own assets to remain in a place where they have little need of ‘rescuing’.
This principle of prevention is gaining increasing traction in Scotland and the Scottish Government’s response to the Christie Commission (2011) has defined a ‘decisive shift towards prevention’ as one of the four key pillars of public sector reform.
At IRISS, prevention is a key theme of our work. So welcome to our blog about our new project Plan P: new approaches to prevention with older people, which looks at preventing isolation and loneliness in older people. Isolation and loneliness have been shown to have significant detrimental effects on health and wellbeing. In fact, one study suggests this is comparable to the impact of smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, 2010). Other adverse effects include increased blood pressure, abnormal stress response, heart disease and poor sleep (Luanaigh and Lawlor, 2008). Additionally, several studies indicate a very strong association with depression (Cacioppo, Hughes and Waite, 2006; Golden and colleagues, 2009). Older people who are lonely or isolated also have substantially increased chances of developing dementia (Fratiglioni, Wang, Ericsson, Maytan and Winblad, 2000) or Alzheimer’s disease (Valtorta and Hanratty, 2012), compared to their better-connected counterparts.
Clearly the preventative impact of enhancing older people’s connections to their communities, families and each other and ensuring we remain involved and valued as we age, must not be underestimated.
Please keep up to date with our work on the project through this blog. We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments. For now, why not check out our first group discussion, What does prevention mean in an ageing population, recorded by the project advisory group for Iriss.fm.
References
Cacioppo JT, Hughes ME and Waite LJ (2006) Loneliness as a specific risk factor for depressive symptoms: Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Psychology and Aging 21(1) pp 140-151
Christie C (2011) Commission on the future delivery of public services. Scottish Government: Edinburgh
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/publications/2011/06/27154527/18
Fratiglioni L, Wang HX, Ericsson K, Maytan M and Winblad B (2000) Influence of social network on occurrence of dementia: a community-based longitudinal study. Lancet 355 pp 1315-1319
Golden J, Conroy RM, Bruce I, Denihan A, Green E, Kirby M and Lawlor BA (2009) Loneliness, social supports, mood and wellbeing in community-dwelling elderly. International Journal of Geriatric Psychaiatry 24 pp 694-700
Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010) Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLoS Med 7(7): e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000316
Luanaigh C and Lawlor BA (2008) Loneliness and the health of older people. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 23 pp 1213-1221
Valtorta N and Hanratty B (2012) Loneliness, isolation and the health of older adults: Do we need a research agenda? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 105, p518-522.