Older Adults’ Experiences of How Participating in a Senior Summer Camp Has Affected Their Lives – A Phenomenographic Study

ABSTRACT

Several municipalities in Sweden organize senior summer camps where older adults can meet and where loneliness and social isolation can be mitigated. Few studies, however, examine how the older adults themselves describe the experience in retrospect and how it might have influenced their daily lives after the stay. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how older adults who participated in a senior summer camp experience the impact the stay has had on their lives. The study has a descriptive qualitative design that uses a phenomenographic approach to explore the variations in the older adults’ conceptions of how their participation at the senior summer camp may have affected them. Nineteen older adults aged between 66 and 94 years were interviewed. Three descriptive categories emerge: “Mitigating loneliness,” ‘Developing as a person’ and ‘Gaining inspiration.’ The study shows that the older adults experience that the stay at the summer camp has had lasting effects on their quality of life. The sense of community at the camp helped them break the experience of loneliness, they improved their self-confidence and gained a positive attitude to life, that it is worth living and that there is much left to experience, regardless of their age.

KEYWORDS:

• Health - mental
• loneliness
• qualitative analysis
• quality of life

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Senior guides [in Swedish: Seniorlots] is a function that exists in many Swedish municipalities with the task of being a support for the elderly to find their way in society, both within the municipality’s activities and among other actors. Sometimes (as was in the case of this study) the senior guides are responsible for arranging activities for the elderly. Social workers, occupational therapists or physiotherapists are often recruited for this professional role.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.