During the pandemic I spoke with a lot of people who are of older age and many of them discussed their troubles with loneliness during the pandemic. Many of them discussed how it was hard for them because they were away from family and didn’t get to see them as much and that is usually who keeps them company. One of them also mentioned how it made them feel old and like they were deteriorating because everyone was saying to stay away from the elderly because they could become sicker than the normal young adult. This point opened up my eyes to how some of them must feel by everyone pointing out their old age and immunity due to their age. I know a few of them mentioned they learned how to video call with family members, so they were still able to see them and communicate with them. I know many of them also met in the driveway and stayed six feet apart from one another so they could at least have human interaction in person and not only over the phone. I expected to find them stressed especially because many older adults live alone and get their interactions by going to see their family or going to events like bingo at community centers. During the pandemic, many activities and events were not taking place which limited their interactions with people so I expected that they would be stressed. However, during that time I thought of everyone as being stressed but it appears that the older community may have been more stressed.
I learned that a significant percentage of older adults do not share their mental health status and that is one of the reasons they are the second highest age group committing suicide each year. Learning this information will help me as a nurse care for this population because I know that they are not as open about their mental health however knowing this will allow me to ask the right questions to assess their mental health status because it is likely they will not openly bring it up to me if not prompted to. I also learned that many older adults focus on the declines related to their health and always want to talk about those things but never talk about the positive sides and the good attributes they possess. This will help me when caring for these patients because I will now ask them the positives and bring up the positives to help them notice them and hopefully focus on those as well. This changed my perspective on aging because prior to learning about this I figured that older adults don’t experience all of the stressors younger people do now that most of them have retired and moved onto the next chapter of their life. However, this knowledge brought to light that now these individuals have more time and many especially during the pandemic were not around as many people. It is important to check the well-being of everyone, but this topic made me realize some populations have a higher risk of suicide that I did not know before this content was provided.
Alexis, thank you so much for recognizing how, in our society, aging is often thought of negatively, in terms of decline & deterioration, and the effect being referred to in this way can have on older adults. Yet, as you point out, there can be some very meaningful and powerful associations with achieving an older age, and it’s important to acknowledge those. The US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy has made loneliness a top priority during his tenure, and has tried to bring attention to it as a public health concern, and the root cause & contributor of many societal ills, in our country. He even published a book about it, and while I haven’t read it, he’s a fascinating speaker & I would imagine it’s an illuminating read!