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Longterm effects of a social rehabilitation programme for elderly people: physiological predictors and mortality data

National Institute for Psychosocial Factors and Health, Stockholm and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston

Töres Theorell

National Institute for Psychosocial Factors and Health, Stockholm

The purpose of this study was to assess possible effects on five-year survival rates of a social rehabilitation programme for elderly institutionalized people. A total of 50 elderly people were randomly selected and allocated to either a control group or a social activation intervention group. A number of physiological parameters were assessed as was the initial health status. Five-year mortality rates showed no differences between the control (10 dead out of the original 27) and the intervention group (8/23). The former, however, tended to have a higher relocation rate to geriatric hospitals, 7/27 and 4/23 respectively. Survivors, in general, had lower systolic blood pressure (145 vs 152 mmHg) and lower serum cholesterol (6.0 vs 6.4 mmol/I). The results indicate a need to reassess the assumed beneficial effects on survival of social activation programmes initiated in late life. The study indicates that risk factors for early death from cardiovascular diseases in a younger population (systolic blood pressure and serum cholesterol) also hold true for older institutionalized subjects, with the possible exception for high density lipoprotein- cholesterol (HDL), which showed an inverse relationship to survival. Larger scaled studies are warranted.

Clinical Rehabilitation, Vol. 1, No. 3, 225-229 (1987)
DOI: 10.1177/026921558700100310


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