{"id":133150,"date":"2020-05-14T10:06:43","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T14:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=133150"},"modified":"2020-05-20T12:15:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T16:15:37","slug":"with-the-engaging-project-ellrodt-20-aims-to-ease-the-ache-of-loneliness-in-old-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/05\/14\/with-the-engaging-project-ellrodt-20-aims-to-ease-the-ache-of-loneliness-in-old-age\/","title":{"rendered":"With \u2018The EngAging Project,\u2019 Ellrodt \u201920 aims to ease the ache of loneliness in old age"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI\u2019m damned lonesome,\u201d a research subject in his 80s told Grace Ellrodt \u201920 last year. \u201cBut I don’t know what the hell to do about it. I just don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For sure, there’s no one-size-fits-all cure for loneliness, a condition particularly troublesome for older people. But with the help of that widowed Maine farmer and more than 50 other folks who shared personal experiences or professional expertise, Ellrodt has assembled an impressive new resource for lonely elders and those who support them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe EngAging Project<\/a>\u201d is first and foremost an online gallery of photographs and stories depicting the 29 people who shared their own experiences with Ellrodt, an environmental studies major from Lenox, Mass. Loneliness was a central theme in the interviews that she conducted in and around Lewiston, Maine, and during study abroad in Temuco, Chile. (The photos are also hers.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jane
Grace Ellrodt listens to Jane Costlow, Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, during a meeting last year. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’ve interviewed older adults who told me that loneliness is like a darkness, you’re just alone in the darkness,\u201d says Ellrodt. But on the other hand, there’s the woman in her late 70s who\u2019s earning a college degree, is a social activist, and who says that \u201cloneliness just exists in your mind, essentially. You just have to get out, get moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bringing a strong record of community engagement<\/a> to The EngAging Project, Ellrodt, a recipient of the Harward Center\u2019s 2020 Outstanding Community-Engaged Academic Work Award, addresses a widespread problem linked to adverse effects both psychological and physical. (A Brigham Young University researcher likened the physical harms of loneliness among people of any age to the effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLoneliness has been shown to contribute to heart disease, loss of motor control, dementia, depression, and anxiety,\u201d says Ellrodt, whose website describes six broad causes of elder loneliness, from financial insecurity to a disconnection from accustomed social and occupational roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its \u201cTakeaways\u201d and \u201cToolkits\u201d sections, respectively, the extensively researched EngAging Project proposes countermeasures against those causes; and it suggests strategies, comprehensive lists of action steps, and outside sources of assistance, all organized by specific constituencies, whether older adults themselves or local officials or policymakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Processed
With part of his face not shown to protect his anonymity, this Somali man photographed in Lewiston was one of Grace Ellrodt’s research subjects. (Grace Ellrodt \u201920)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

An overriding theme of the project, though, is the role of place, specifically the importance of place in providing opportunities for social engagement among older folks, Ellrodt says. (Following the federal definition of older adult, her focus is people age 65 and up.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s a way of saying, \u2018Let’s not focus on the public health crisis and epidemic of loneliness when aging is already characterized by problems.\u2019 Instead, let’s make it about encouraging social engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Ellrodt focuses on the growing policy emphasis on so-called aging in place, where older people are encouraged to stay in their homes as long as possible. \u201cBut loneliness seeps into these arrangements,\u201d she says. \u201cIf this is to be a sustainable trend, we\u2019ll need expanded state and local support.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the EngAging Project positions lonely older people as the prime movers in their own healing. \u201cWhile they need support, such as infrastructure and emotional resources, it has to be their own process and they have to be in control,” she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The website was Ellrodt\u2019s major project for an environmental studies course that substitutes substantial published writing for the customary senior thesis. The project\u2019s focus, she allows, may seem unconventional for environmental studies \u2014 but she sees at least two strong connections. One is the considerable overlap between ES and the field of public health (the area in which she hopes to make her career, perhaps through journalism).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Processed
Photographed from the chin down to preserve his anonymity, this Maine man was one of Grace Ellrodt’s research subjects. (Grace Ellrodt \u201920)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Then there’s sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s concept of “social infrastructure” \u2014 in Ellrodt\u2019s words, \u201cthe programs and physical places where we form bonds, where social cohesion happens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd one of the main things Klinenberg talks about is \u2018third spaces,\u2019 places like libraries and public parks, but also the diner down the street.\u201d That widowed farmer, pre-COVID-19, found friends and companionship at The Settlement, a gas station-cum-restaurant in the town of Sabattus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis Eanes, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies, taught this semester’s edition of that capstone course, \u201cEnvironmental Writing in the Public Sphere.\u201d And Ellrodt, he says, \u201creasonably makes the case that \u2018social infrastructure,\u2019 the web of social networks and institutional offerings that foster human connections vital for staving off loneliness, is inextricably bound up with the built environment.\u201d These are integral parts of ES, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Begun as a yearlong thesis, The EngAging Project morphed into Ellrodt’s final project in the capstone, for which seniors develop an online portfolio of writings for public consumption. To Eanes, the project exemplifies the intentions of a course designed to unpack complex socio-environmental phenomena for diverse constituencies, including \u201caging lonely individuals, caregivers, families, and practitioners and policymakers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some loneliness is natural, but long-term and intense loneliness is unnecessary suffering. We have a community responsibility to intervene.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Ellrodt has been both \u201cartful and rigorous\u201d in fusing solid research with rich human stories, Eanes says. She strikes a \u201csensible balance between asset- and deficit-based approaches\u201d by offsetting the real harms of elder loneliness \u2014 harms rooted in economic and societal structures \u2014 with depictions of \u201cthe amazing personal qualities and solutions that her aging subjects offer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellrodt’s interest in public health comes in part from her parents, who work at the Berkshire Medical Center, in Pittsfield. Her father is Dr. Gray Ellrodt, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the hospital. She recalls, \u201cWe\u2019d sit at the kitchen table and he would take a napkin and draw charts of the different social determinants of public health trends that we were seeing\u201d in Berkshire County, which shares certain economic and demographic qualities with the Lewiston-Auburn region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A philosophy minor, Ellrodt also points to a biomedical ethics course at Bates as informing her thoughts. \u201cElder loneliness isn\u2019t just a societal \u2018resource strain,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIt represents an injustice. Some loneliness is natural, but long-term and intense loneliness is unnecessary suffering. We have a community responsibility to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She zeroed in on elder loneliness as a research topic while studying public health practices in Chile in 2019. \u201cIn conversations with my host mother, herself an older adult, as well as my own dad, we arrived at this question of loneliness among older people as a public health crisis.” And that question found its way into the interviews she conducted among Temuco residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Awarded
Awarded this year for community engagement, Grace Ellrodt takes part in a 2018 Window Dressers workshop in Lewiston. Window Dressers is a Maine nonprofit that brings volunteers together to produce low-cost insulating window inserts that help retain heat in homes. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those subjects included indigenous people and European descendants; and in Maine, in addition to European descendants whose local roots go back generations, Ellrodt talked to older adults from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mexico, and Brazil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere’s a unity\u201d among all the subjects in terms of how they comprehend loneliness, Ellrodt says, \u201cbut there’s also such a disparate experience. And so I’ve been navigating it, really, just by letting interviewees define aging for themselves, define loneliness for themselves, and set out what brings them social integration, or prevents that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd then once they’ve each articulated that for themselves, I\u2019m allowed to come in and find patterns and differences.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, even as The EngAging Project is abundantly researched, Ellrodt has been deliberate about putting storytelling at the center of it. While there are patterns of experience common to humans confronting loneliness, even across cultural differences, ameliorating loneliness is always an individual journey, and storytelling reflects diversity and individuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Processed
Juan, one of Grace Ellrodt’s research subjects for The EngAging Project, is pictured in 2019 on his farm in Makewe, a primarily indigenous community in southern Chile. Ellrodt’s image was featured in the 2020 Barlow Off-Campus Study Exhibition at Bates. (Grace Ellrodt ’20)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat kinds of social bonds are you looking to form?\u201d she wonders. \u201cWhat is your identity? What is your life history and how is that being interrupted by the process of aging?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her profiles, Ellrodt combined audio and photos with the texts. \u201cVisuals and voices make the storyteller human \u2014 more than worthy of our eyes and ears,\u201d she says. She framed most of the photos, she adds, to conceal the subject’s identity. \u201cThat was not only as a comfort for the photographed, already sharing so much,\u201d she says, \u201cbut also lets the subject take on qualities of any older person you may love, or wonder about as you flit by, or imagine yourself becoming in time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something Ellrodt has heard a lot during the past few months is that the COVID-19 pandemic has made The EngAging Project more relevant than ever. But the truth is just a semantic difference away: The problem of loneliness among older adults was no less relevant back when they were isolated not by a pandemic but by infirmity, distance, or a lack of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile we see an alarming swell in loneliness right now, loneliness ran deep and wide through older adult communities long before COVID,\u201d Ellrodt says, \u201cand it will remain long after COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Processed
A Brazilian immigrant and longtime Maine resident, this subject doesn’t believe in loneliness, as she told Grace Ellrodt. (Grace Ellrodt ’20)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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