Do you live near a park?

As I walked back to my car, after setting up the workshop I passed a lady and she said, “Good Morning”, I replied, “Good Morning and how are you doing?” She looked at me and frowned and just said: “I’m alive”. I deposited some material in the car and went back to the center where I was giving a workshop on “Common skin conditions for seniors”. When I walked into the room, the woman I had passed was sitting in the front row. She looked at me and said, “You are giving the workshop?” I said, “Yes, and I am glad you are alive to be here for it.” She laughed and the other 14 people at my workshop looked at her and then I left the room for a second, but when I came back she and other people in the workshop were laughing.

As I was leaving, after the workshop, I took a look around the center. There were a dozen or so people in the Billiard room, the small cafeteria was almost full, I could hear, but could not see the people in the auditorium exercising, the card room was buzzing and the lawn bowling courts (all 4) were full of teams enjoying the nice weather. There was also a number of people just watching. I was struck by the energy in the center and the good feeling of the group. Loneliness is a problem for many seniors, but it did not appear to be a problem for the people I saw this morning.

CARP,  is one of Canada’s largest advocacy group for older Canadians, it surveyed its members in 2017 to find out about their social environment, contact with people, age, health, access to public services, and family situations and analyzed the correlation between these factors with feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Here are some of the findings:

• People who were married were far less likely to be lonely and were far less socially isolated than those who were not married.

• Access to public services reducing loneliness far more than the effects of having children or grandchildren.

• Those who rated the transit they had access to as ‘high-quality’ were far less lonely; this effect was about half the size of the effect of being married.

The members said that living near parks, community (senior) centers, libraries and high-quality transit helped their quality of life and helped combat loneliness.

Loneliness Affects People’s Health More than Age

The survey found that people who are lonelier or have less social contact are also likely to report lower levels of general health, and are more likely to report that they are sicker than they were one year ago.

Surprisingly, loneliness impacts people’s description of their overall health more than twice as much as being older. The impact of loneliness is also about one third larger than the effect of socio-economic status, which public health research has long established as an important predictor of health outcomes.

CARP’s social isolation and loneliness survey was completed by 5,308 CARP members from every province and territory, except Nunavut. This poll was conducted by e-mail from April 17, 2017, to March 1th, 2017. 99.4% of respondents were over 55.