A CLINICAL OBSERVATION OF LONELINESS AMONG ELDERLY PERSONS
This observation concerns a group of six elderly individuals in an institutional setting. All six individuals reside in the same institution. All of the individual are over the age of 70 years, and all are experiencing and are reacting negatively to loneliness.
Social integration refers to the "actual empirical study of the integration of older people into society in its many forms, and the ameliorative strategies designed to enhance or facilitate social integration."1 The "integration of individuals into their society results from forces which place them within the system and govern their participation and patterned associations with others."2 Social values, group memberships, and social roles are "conceived as the axes providing the ties that structure social interaction, place the person in society, and order relations with others. In effect, actors are integrated into society through the beliefs they hold, the positions they occupy, and the groups to which they belong."3
With respect to older adults, one assumption holds that people are well integrated in their middle years, and become less so as they age. Thus, it is thought that satisfactory social integration "might be maintained to the extent that middle age patterns are preserved in . . . advancing age."4
Maintaining middle age patterns, however, is often difficult.5 Aging often "brings with it losses of central social roles resulting from status changes in the arenas of marriage, work, family, income, health, and the like. Group memberships also tend to decline with age."6
While great individual variation exists, "many older people find it increasingly difficult to maintain friendships, neighborhood ties, family relationships, and the like" under the changing conditions of their lives.7 The deaths of friends and spouses, together with mobility restrictions related to both health and income, c...