Loneliness In Older Adults Essay

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Loneliness in Older Adults: An Embodied Experience by Judith M. Smith is a journal of Gerontological nursing that explores the bodily effects of loneliness on the older adult population. This journal presents the reader with research and recounts from individuals who experience their everyday loneliness that is expressed through their bodies in various ways. These embodying experiences hold back those individual’s from participating in activities they love or allowing them to enjoy their everyday lives. Gerontological nurses can alter these experiences using two specific interventions, music therapy and animal-assisted therapy, to actively reduce loneliness in the older adult population, ultimately creating a whole and healing environment at all levels. The first key point of the study was the discovery that many older adults experienced loneliness when they were unable to have purposeful interactions with their friends and family due to a limiting health conditions, such as hearing or vision impairment. Their health conditions made it difficult for them to enjoy their usual engagement, thus …show more content…

Her eighth caritas process, “creating healing environment at all levels, whereby wholeness, beauty, comfort, dignity, and peace are potentiated” (Keenan-Lindsay, 2010, p.2), can be incorporated into the first nursing intervention discussed previously. The use of music therapy to address the loneliness and depressive emotions of the older adult population can work to create an environment of melody and harmony in which emotions are brought forward and dealt with in the appropriate manner. This nursing intervention demonstrates Watson’s eighth caritas process by allowing for the creation of a healing environment that can allow older adults to engage with one another and build a network of friends to support them in times of emotional