Every life deserves a good end: Characteristics of elderly people suffering loneliness. Results from the population-based KORA AGE study

Aims: Living life with feelings of loneliness and other related negative feelings affect many people in old age. Feelings of loneliness not only reduce mental well-being. Loneliness has emerged as a key social-emotional factor linked to cardiovascular health outcome. Its independent influence on risk for mortality is comparable with well established risk factors such as physical inactivity and smoking. Not everybody, who lives alone, suffers loneliness, but feeling lonely is the emotional response to a perceived discrepancy between desired and actual level of social interaction. To better understand the phenomen…