Top Ways to Support Lonely Seniors in Your Life

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Seniors are not strangers to loneliness, and that’s quite a sad fact. By the time you get to your senior years, you hope to have your family and all of your friends surrounding you. But sometimes life just doesn’t work out that way.

There are plenty of studies out there that show that loneliness and socially isolated older people are more likely to experience dementia, depression, chronic pain and physical frailty than others. Social isolation later in life can result in social exclusion and a reduced well-being, so we have to do what we can to combat loneliness in the elderly. If you have seen your relatives or friends who have parents who they can’t care for.
You need to look at ways that you can support those relatives and those seniors in your life. Not all support is required to be medical in nature. There are plenty of options for non medical in home care and whether you have somebody else providing that or you provide that yourself, that’s completely up to you. If you’re looking to reduce loneliness in your older loved ones and promote their social well-being, here’s some of the things that you could be doing.

1. Offer practical help. Sometimes loneliness is about not having the additional support needed. Encourage them to keep their important appointments and take them to those mundane errands that will seem mundane to you but not necessarily mundane to them. Assisting them with posting letters or picking up medications, driving to grocery stores, and even sitting with a cup of tea are all things that you can do to offer practical help.
2. Encourage them to take up their hobbies. It’s not just a way to fill the time. Hobbies can provide a sense of purpose. If your senior loved one still has the dexterity to knit or to sew, they can create clothing for children on maternity wards. There are a lot of hospitals with programmes for volunteers who can come in and cuddle babies or to just sit with other elderly people for a cup of tea. It’s these moments and these volunteering opportunities that can help your senior loved one to feel needed. And that’s one of the main reasons that they feel lonely. When the kids have flown the nest or when they’ve left work for retirement, they just don’t feel useful anymore.
3. Encourage them to be social. The only thing that’s better than enjoying their hobbies is enjoying them with other people. Encourage your senior loved one to take part in activities where it’s more social with other people around. This can be anything from a gentle sport to a card game. There are plenty of cities and towns that have social clubs that are specifically designed for seniors. There will always be activities on websites that you can look for, and you can hunt out these opportunities with local healthcare services too.
4. Get them out of the house. It’s very easy for seniors to feel lonely when they are stuck indoors all day. All the seniors can become very comfortable with staying inside and sitting for too long, and it’s not a great idea to do that day in and day out. Sitting at home all day has negative impacts on physical and mental health and after a while you suddenly realise they haven’t spoken to another human being in a very long time. Getting outdoors can provide that much needed change of scenery, exercise and a chance to go out with other people. It can make all the difference in their social life and health and you want them to feel better in themselves.
5. Keep them active. Going into an Aqua aerobics class for seniors or joining some sort of workout class for seniors is important in later life, not only for them to feel good in their own bodies, but for them to socialise with other people. Keeping them active can help them to reduce symptoms of mental health conditions such as depression, and you can even help them to keep them as healthy as possible. Whether you join them on a brisk walk yourself or you encourage them to sign up for a class where they can meet new people, it’s important to encourage your lonely seniors in your life to be active and keep their bodies moving.

Age creeps up on us all if we’re lucky enough, and you don’t ever want to be in the position of being lonely. It’s important to do what you can now to make sure that you set out for your retirement surrounded by people who love you.