from Part II - Society Interacting with Brain, Cognition, and Health in Late Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2023
While social disconnection has been consistently perceived as a threat to human beings, objective and subjective social disconnectedness have been associated with poor physical well-being and a higher mortality rate. These factors are equivalent to or more significant than other well-known risk factors, such as smoking. Although mild to severe loneliness persists across the lifespan, correlates of loneliness show age differences, and loneliness affects late-life depression and accelerates the rate of physiological decline with age. In many societies, older adults undergo a transition in social life after retirement or bereavement, leading in many cases to social isolation, which may result in loneliness. This chapter reviews the effects of social isolation on late-life psychological health, focusing on the role of perceived isolation, also known as loneliness. It also discusses multiple risk factors contributing to loneliness, which can be described in terms of trait and state loneliness. Lastly, it notes that not all social connections are beneficial for all when discussing gender differences in social networks.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.