Everyday life in older men living alone – a complex view needing a biopsychosocial perspective

Abstract

Purpose: To explore how older men living alone, describe their everyday activities and their abilities as well as how they could be helped in everyday life.

Materials and methods: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were analysed with inductive content analysis. Eight men aged 65+ years were included. They were all living alone, albeit with home help services. They were able to walk and had sufficient cognitive ability.

Results: The analysis resulted in one theme “A driving force of managing activities and overcome hindering factors requires a broad spectrum of prerequisites for participating in everyday life” with the following four categories: Importance of everyday activities; individual prerequisites enabling everyday activities; body and mind inhibit, and react to the decreased, abilities; and importance of the environment.

Conclusions: The results generate a complex view of older men’s everyday life. It is important for older men’s independence that health care and rehabilitation staff adopt a comprehensive view and work from a biopsychosocial (BPS) perspective.

Implications for rehabilitation

• To be an older man living alone might mean a decreased health and good health is a strong predictor for increased abilities in everyday activities. The living situation of older men living alone is not well studied and needs to be explored to a greater extend, especially from their own perspective.

• An interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors was expressed as important for older men’s everyday life, in accordance with the biopsychosocial (BPS) model.

• The expressed importance of participation as well as performing both physical and social activities reflects the need of individualised goals in rehabilitation according to the behavioural medicine approach.

• It is of outmost importance that health care and rehabilitation staff in contact with this group has a comprehensive view and works from a biopsychosocial (BPS) perspective, for maintenance of the older men’s independence in everyday life.

Keywords:

• Activities in everyday life
• daily rhythm
• elderly
• gender
• home help services
• physiotherapy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.