Reducing Loneliness among Hong Kong Older Adults: A Three-arm Randomized Controlled Trial

Older adults are not only at a significantly greater risk of mortality and a more difficult recovery following infection with COVID-19, but they also face additional vulnerabilities, such as social isolation because of a range of non-pharmaceutical public health social distancing measures. Social isolation is likely to lead to loneliness and our study has shown that approximately 45% of Hong Kong Chinese older adults sometimes or always felt lonely. It is well-established that loneliness is associated with numerous detrimental consequences on psychological, physical, and cognitive health. Against this backdrop, it is of the utmost importance to develop an effective intervention to reduce loneliness among Hong Kong’s older adults, especially during times like the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, we will examine the effectiveness of two different psychosocial interventions (i.e. a layperson-delivered, empathy-focused program of telephone calls and wisdom-enhancing narrative-therapy intervention) by comparing them with a telephone-delivered befriending intervention in a three-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a random sample of community-dwelling older adults who feel lonely.

Funding Source: RGC - General Research Fund (GRF)