Well-trained personnel and friendly technologies should be developed to help the older generation feel safe and combat their loneliness, says Bruno Vanhaelst
If latest reports are anything to go by, roughly one in five people suffer from loneliness. And cases of loneliness among elderly will only rise in the future. The English longitudinal Study on Aging suggests that by 2030 1.5 million older men will be living on their own in England, nearly double the current number.
The psychological and physical effects of persistent loneliness are varied and include sleep disruption, depression, high blood pressure and constant stress. A 2012 study in the Netherlands found participants who felt lonely (including some who were not alone in life) were at 64 per cent greater risk of developing dementia than others. Experts have found that feelings of rejection and isolation can create brain response similar to physical pain. According to University of Chicago psychologist and researcher John Cacioppo, loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 14 per cent.
The problem of loneliness is inevitably set to grow. There are currently 868 million people in the world aged 60 years or more and that number is rising at nearly double the rate as compared to any other age category. According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there will be 2.4 billion people aged 80 and over by 2050 and they will represent 10 per cent of the world’s population at that time, compared to just four per cent in 2010. There’s a clear urgency to anticipate those shifting figures by adapting policies and services to prevent the seclusion — and safeguard quality of life — of that enormous, aging group of people. Yet like the famous miser Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol — another seasonal tale about the risks of loneliness — the growing population of the elderly are not doomed to a fate of spreading solitude.
There are solutions that are in the best interest of individuals, businesses and society. More must be done to address the problems of aging, including loneliness. Even in times of tightening national budgets, funding must be found to reinforce pensions, affordable healthcare and various aids like subsidised public transportation that enhance quality of life for the aged. These investments are in everyone’s interests.
Indeed, facing the demographic and human challenge of aging will offer challenges and opportunities for businesses. This huge demographic represents an expanding market requiring goods, services and help that companies and institutions aren’t sufficiently providing today but which we need to develop rapidly.
A far larger number of healthcare workers must be recruited and trained to meet the looming challenge. Workers providing other services for the elderly — drivers, cleaners, food service assistants and other service-providers — can be trained to engage in a more empathetic and compassionate manner to help abate the feeling of isolation of the older people they care for.
Similarly, technology should be further adapted to battle loneliness and offer care, including applications to allow families, friends and care-providers to keep in contact with older people. Social media must be created to establish communication with (and between) otherwise isolated seniors and phone apps and other technologies should be developed to respond to their particular needs.
But IT innovation will never replace physical connectedness and human warmth. Restoring quality of life that loneliness undermines starts by bridging the gap between people who have become isolated from the rest of us. Focussing the conversation around quality of life, and not simply longevity, is crucial to creating programmes to truly combat loneliness and improve care. As a society, we need to prioritise this and as businesses houses, we need to lead the efforts. Finally, individually, this means applying some of our holiday spirit today, to our interactions with older and isolated people, every day.
(The author is the CEO of Sodexo’s Personal and Home Services Division)