Abstract:
This survey research aimed to study loneliness in hospitalized older persons with chronic illnesses and to study and compare variables between age, sex, personality, length of stay, number of visits of reltives, activity of daily living, self-esteem, and social support and loneliness in hospitalized older persons with chronic illnesses. Participants consisted of 400 hospitalized older persons with chronic illnesses in inpatient department in teriary public hospitals, Bangkok Metropolis, and were selected by using multi-stage random sampling technique. Research instruments were demographic questionnaires, Barthel ADL Index, Culteral-Free Self-Esteem Inventory (CFSEI-2), Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI), Social Support, and the Schedule for the Measurement of Loneliness and Cathectic Investment (SMLC) which were tested for content validity and reliability. The Cronbachs alpha coefficients were 0.83, 0.92, 0.85, 0.81 and .86 respectively. Data were analysed by using descriptive statistics, independent t-test and one-way ANOVA. The findings were as follows: 1. Loneliness of the hospitalized older persons with chronic illnesses was at low level (60.5%), follow by high level (10%) 2. The variables related to hospitalized older persons with chronic illnesses were age at young old group (60-69 years), sex with almost equal in number of males and females, had the most expressive and sensitive personality (95%), the average length of stay of 10.3 days, the most number of visits of their relatives was 2 times a day (46.3%), perform daily activities at a low level (42.50%), had low self-esteem (57.75%), and feel that social support is at a high level (70%). 3. Loneliness in hospitalized older persons with chronic illnesses was significantly different by age, sex, length of stay, number of visits of reltives, activity of daily living, self-esteem, and social support at the level of 0.05, but personality was not significantly different. The oldest-old (aged 80 years and older) were lonelier than the others aged group. Females were lonelier than males. Those who had relative visited 3 times a day, low daily activities, high level of self-esteem, and those with a high level of social support were found more loneliness.