Article of the month – March 2020

The Interdem Website Committee has chosen a paper dedicated to loneliness as a Publication of the Month March.

Managing loneliness: a qualitative study of older people’s views by K. Kharicha, J. Manthorpe, S. Iliffe, C. A. Chew-Graham, M. Cattan, C. Goodman, M. Kirby-Barr, J. H. Whitehouse & K. Walters (Aging & Mental Health, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2020.1729337).

Unlike the other months, we decided to make an exception and chose a paper which  does not cover only people with dementia and/or their carer. We believe that loneliness is a very important issue, and its relevance increased during the extraordinary time of COVID-19 pandemic. This paper will be relevant for all people living with dementia and their carers who need to deal with social isolation, staying away from their families and friends.
Authors aimed to explore how community-dwelling lonely older people in England manage their experiences of loneliness. Participants in this study focused on a range of strategies to ameliorate their distress which had been developed over their lives and shaped according to individual coping styles and contexts. Older people also conveyed a personal responsibility for managing feelings of loneliness rather than relying on others. This paper also presents practical recommendations for policy developments and responses to manage loneliness in a better way, based on obtained outcomes.