Relationships and material culture in a residential home for older people

Prevalence and determinants of loneliness among the oldest old living in institutionalized settings : Study findings from a representative survey

BACKGROUND

There is very limited knowledge regarding the prevalence and determinants of loneliness in oldest old residents of nursing or old age homes.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the prevalence and determinants of loneliness among the oldest old living in institutionalized settings in Germany.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Data were taken from the representative survey on quality of life and subjective well-being of the very old in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW80+) including individuals ≥ 80 years living in North Rhine-Westphalia. The study focused on individuals living in institutionalized settings. Sociodemographic, lifestyle-related, and health-related determinants were included in multiple linear regression models.

RESULTS

Approximately 56.6% of the individuals were not lonely, 25.7% and 17.8% of the individuals were moderately and severely lonely, respectively. Regression analyses showed that higher loneliness was associated with being married (β = 0.48, p < 0.05), high education (compared to low education, β = 0.46, p < 0.05), having a small social network size (β = -0.02, p < 0.05), having poor self-rated health (β = -0.25, p < 0.05), and more depressive symptoms (β = 0.25, p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

A significant proportion of the institutionalized oldest old individuals reported moderate or severe loneliness, which underpins the relevance of this topic. Understanding the determinants of loneliness may help to address institutionalized adults aged 80 years and over at risk of loneliness.

Place-Making through Media: How Media Environments Make a Difference for Long-Term Care Residents’ Agency

This paper explores the unique relationships care home residents have with communication media. Drawing on findings from an ethnographic case study at a long-term care site in British Columbia, Canada, I describe how care home residents’ everyday media practices are intertwined with their negotiations of longstanding attachments and new living spaces. The research draws connections between the spatiotemporal contexts of media use and residents’ experiences of social agency. Long-term care residents in this research were challenged to engage with the wider community, maintain friendships, or stay current with events and politics because their preferred ways of using communication media were not possible in long-term care. The communication inequalities experienced by care home residents were not simply about their lack of access to media or content but about their inability to find continuity with their established media habits in terms of time and place. While most research about communication media in care homes has been intervention oriented, this research suggests that long-term care service and funding policies require greater attention to create flexible, diverse, and supportive media environments.

Material Citizenship: An ethnographic study exploring object-person relations in the context of people with dementia in care homes

Materiality has become an increasingly important topic in sociological studies of health care. How objects support the identity of people with dementia in care homes is an emerging area. While early research has tended to focus on sentimental or cherished items (such as photographs or keepsakes), the present study focused on functional objects (such as curling tongs or a hairdryer) as a mechanism to actualise citizenship. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study into the everyday experiences of people with dementia living in a residential care home in southern England. Drawing on a framework analysis of observations of daily life, object-elicitation interviews with residents, in-depth interviews with staff and relatives and documentary research, the findings demonstrate that object relations are a critical but overlooked site for citizenship. Residents are rarely involved in decision-making relating to their personal possessions, lack control over objects and are often discouraged from material interactions important to the maintenance and cultivation of identity. We introduce a new concept 'material citizenship' to advance thinking and practice in this area and argue that it is valuable for care practices to combine a material citizenship approach with existing care practices; thus, elevating the importance of object-person relations in dementia care.