Variables related to affective mental disorders in the elderly. Social life, somatic and mental health at the age of 70 and 75.

It is reported about a population study of 70-year-old people in Gothenburg with the special concept of suffering from loneliness. The aim was to study factors that might cause or be the consequences of loneliness. In this study 12% of males and 25% of females suffered from loneliness. The lonely women felt sick more often and visited physicians more frequently than the other women, whereas diseases such as coronary insufficiency had no obvious relationship to feeling of loneliness. Together with other symptoms is the feeling of loneliness one symptom in a syndrom of depression of mood and low life satisfaction.