Social support and the elderly client.

Abstract

The elderly have a higher risk of experiencing less social support because of role losses and changes associated with aging and chronic disease processes, and there is pressure from third-party payors to reduce the length of home healthcare services. Few studies have examined patients' instrumental social support after discharge from home healthcare. Therefore, this descriptive study examined instrumental social support of discharged home healthcare clients (N = 57) who were older than 65 years old, using a telephone interview and retrospective record review. The purposes were to investigate (1) source and number of sources of received support based on age, gender, marital status, race, and functional ability; (2) whether source of support was associated with physical and mental health outcomes; (3) whether clients' perception of need for more support was associated with physical and mental health outcomes. The results indicated that the number of sources of social support was associated with clients' gender, marital status; and functional status; trends toward improvements in mental and physical health outcomes were associated with support provided by friends and neighbors.