Abstract
This paper presents research findings that help to understand how museum programs created opportunities to enhance wellbeing and health, and changed experiences of social isolation in older adults. The research conceptualized how program elements enabled both individual experiences and relational processes to occur. These components operated within a context that was enriched by the museum as a place to support wellbeing and enhance social interaction. To meaningfully support socially isolated older people as part of local public health strategies, museums need to be accessible and engaging places that purposively support social interaction by involving people and objects, participating in multiple sessions over time, that are facilitated by skilled and knowledgeable staff.
Highlights
With the shift away from state run social care towards a more community focus, together with an ageing population that is increasingly isolated, it is clear that innovative ways to improve healthy ageing are needed (The Kings Fund, 2015)
Social prescribing is one way to offer interventions focusing on activities of interest, rather than perpetuating dependence on clinical interventions such as psychological therapies, GP visits, and psychotropic medication, to improve social inclusion and wellbeing in older people
Milligan et al (2015) suggested that dwelling alone has tended to be largely regarded as an issue affecting older women but as the life expectancy gap is narrowing between genders, social isolation is increasing in older men
Summary
With the shift away from state run social care towards a more community focus, together with an ageing population that is increasingly isolated, it is clear that innovative ways to improve healthy ageing are needed (The Kings Fund, 2015). Milligan et al (2015) suggested that dwelling alone has tended to be largely regarded as an issue affecting older women but as the life expectancy gap is narrowing between genders, social isolation is increasing in older men. Klijs et al (2017) found that social relations buffer the effect of neighborhood deprivation on psychologically-related quality of life. These findings suggest that a complex mix of individual and social contributors are needed and for a large proportion of people, interventions that address environmental or social factors, could change their experience of loneliness
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