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9
Abstract
Old age and loneliness. A study of older people’s experiences of loneliness and
their meanings and interpretations
The loneliness of older people has often been under discussion in the media during
the last few years. In the media, as well as in previous studies, it has been suggested
that loneliness is a very common phenomenon in old age, and therefore its negative
effects touch older people widely. When people talk about loneliness, they often also
talk about many other negative matters. Living alone, difficulties in getting help and
insecurity connected with them, as well as depression, suicides and experiences of
rejection have been debated. However, the meanings of loneliness for older people
themselves have not been widely discussed in the media or addressed in academic
studies. Fairly little is known about how older people themselves describe their
loneliness or what kinds of images the media constructs about the loneliness of older
people.
The purpose of this study is to provide new information about the interpretations,
meanings and explanations that are given to the loneliness of older people. The
purpose was to determine how older people themselves describe and explain their
loneliness and, on the other hand, what kinds of meanings and interpretations they
give to loneliness. Furthermore, the loneliness of older people was examined from the
perspective of newspaper and magazine texts.
As a whole, the data in this study were fairly diverse. There were three data sets
in which loneliness was examined from a personal point of view. Two of them were
interviews and the third consisted of texts written by the older people. The first data set
comprised interviews with women aged over 90 years, who had never been married,
were childless and living alone (N = 24). The interviews focused on discussion about
being alone. The second set of interview material was collected from the older people
who participated in the group activity aimed at alleviating loneliness (15 women, 5
men). The participants were aged over 75 years, and they lived independently alone
in their own homes or with a spouse or a child. The texts of the older people who
participated in the groups formed the third data set (N = 90). Loneliness in public
discussion was studied by using texts addressing the loneliness of older people, drawn
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