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Social Capital and Health in Old Age
Sanja Jankelic, Marija Tasic
Purpose: The importance of the fact that a man?s life, from birth to death, is interlaced in everyday contacts with other individuals is often neglected. These contacts, over the time, create a most diverse milieu of mutual relations, ties, roles and functions, which determine, to a great extent, a man?s life, and health. There is well provided evidence that a psychosocial well-being in old age is commonly associated with social capital. Social capital here is described in psycho-sociological sense and refers to a cognitive, emotional and service giving provided by the network's members. The aim of the paper is to show that there is a closely correlation between deprived social resources as living alone and lack of social network support, and low psychological well-being measured by feeling lonely, not satisfaction with present life, negative self?perception of health.
Methodology: The data presented in this paper has been collected by questionnaire administered to Institute?s patients at their admission in 2004 (N=585). It included evaluation of health status, social status and self perception of health of all patients referred to home treatment and care. Important results were found out by method of statistical analyses and confirmed initiative hypothesis.
Results: Out of total admitted patients (N=585) there were high percent 53.6% patients living alone; 31.8% respondents spent most of the time alone. Among these patients with poor social capital, there has been high prevalence of low psychosocial well-being: 11.7% reported they were feeling lonely very often and 40.5% were feeling lonely often; and 45.4% patients were not satisfied with present life. This psychosocial status was one of the implications of lack of social network support associated with multiplies morbidity.
Conclusion: Through the care policy it should empowered social capital to be involved in care management of elderly. Better coordination between care professionals and informal caregivers including family or kinship support could be beneficial for quality of life in old age.
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