“Important research has linked social isolation and loneliness to a range of poor outcomes in older adults from reduced neurocognitive, cardiovascular, and autoimmune health, to increased risk for depression, anxiety, and financial abuse,” she said. Social isolation is linked to poor physical and mental health outcomes-a particular concern during the pandemic, as older adults are already more vulnerable to the virus, said Stephanie Lederman, executive director of the nonprofit American Federation for Aging Research. Research has found that older adults tend to have fewer social interactions and a smaller social network than younger adults, a gradual shift that occurs alongside major life changes, including retirement and the deaths of family members, friends and neighbors. “The morale here in our community is just extremely high, and it's all because of strangers around the world.
#SNAIL MAIL PEN PALS FOR SENIORS TV#
“It is like Christmas morning every day here,” Becky Hudson, the Houston facility’s lifestyle director, said in a TV interview.
In Houston, residents of a retirement home posted a plea on Facebook for “pictures, letters and drawings from you or your kids” and were promptly inundated with mail. A letter exchange in Madison, Connecticut pairs seniors with children, while programs in Pennsylvania and California ask families to send “encouraging and friendly notes, poems, drawing and stories to older adults in long-term care facilities or independent housing complexes. Similar programs have launched at nursing homes and residential facilities across the country as activity directors aim to keep seniors connected during widespread social isolation. “I opened up a letter today from South Carolina that said, ‘We read about your program in our local newspaper.’ It’s just wonderful.” We are coast to coast now, getting letters from all over the United States,” Vanderweit said. But after local media outlets reported on the program, Vanderweit opened it up to the community at large-and letters began pouring in. The program started simply, with letters going to and from the county-run facility and Summercrest Senior Living Community, a private home two hours away in Newport, New Hampshire. And what a lot of our folks grew up doing was writing letters and then waiting by the mailbox for a response.” “It just seemed like a really good way to bridge a gap, because like the rest of the country, we’re self-isolating right now.
“And the idea just came to me-a pen-pal program,” he said. It’s a community-driven home, he said, where visitors come to see one person and end up chatting at length with a dozen others-so when the facility went on lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus, he worried that the seniors would feel abandoned. Vanderweit, an activity aide at Sullivan County Health Care in Unity, N.H., was concerned about the effects that social isolation would have on the nursing and rehab facility’s 135 residents. As the coronavirus spread toward New Hampshire and communities began advising residents to isolate at home, Rich Vanderweit began brainstorming.
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