Background
Bereavement and loss experiences, such as the loss of the spouse, close relatives, friends or significant others are common phenomena in the elderly [
1]. Such loss experiences are not only more likely with age, but also require psychological re-adjustment from relatives and survivors, and can be associated with substantial health and psychosocial impairments [
2‐
5]. Such effects of loss experiences and bereavement on health and other outcomes range from negative changes in routine health behaviors including physical activity, nutrition, sleep quality, alcohol consumption, tobacco use, and body weight status [
6], reduced life satisfaction [
7] to negative effects on patterns of health care utilization [
8]. Moreover, a recent study showed that bereavement after spousal loss can negatively influence the quality of health care that individuals receive because the crisis caused by spousal death may negatively affect individuals’ abilities to maintain contact with health care providers [
9]. Against this background, loss experiences and grief can be accompanied by unmet care needs in old age, that often remain undetected and can negatively affect well-being and role functioning [
4]. The definition of care needs is based on the “capacity-to-benefit-concept“, covering the ability of individuals to benefit from healthcare provision. According to this concept, care needs are assumed to exist if there is potential for an effective treatment or health gain. Based on this concept, the Camberwell Assessment of Need in the Elderly (CANE) was developed in order to systematically assess the met and unmet care needs in older individuals [
10]. Since its development, the CANE was translated into many languages and internationally used in a broad range of settings. Correspondingly, care needs are met if they receive appropriate support or assistance. On the other hand, unmet care needs exist, if there is currently no adequate intervention for it, the wrong type or the wrong level of help.
According to the National Health & Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally representative survey of Americans aged 65 or older, the vast majority of older adults receives help by at least one informal caregiver [
11]. Family caregivers such as spouses or other family members play an important role in this context [
12], as they provide help with basic activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Thus, they present important resources in supporting elderly care recipients [
13]. Current research has investigated family caregiver factors associated with unmet needs of older adults [
14], finding associations e.g. with younger age of caregivers, the type of family relationship (sons), the living situation (apart from care recipient), or experiencing high levels of burden. On the other hand, little is known about the situation of elderly people in case a potential informal caregiver passes away. Consequently, the relationship between loss experiences and specific, associated unmet needs in old age is widely underresearched. Data for Germany are widely missing. Particularly in view of the demographic change in Germany, but also in other European Countries, gaining knowledge about this relationship may have important practical implications for providing adequate and appropriate care for the oldest old. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the frequency and distribution of loss experiences and their association with unmet needs in the elderly aged 75+ years. Therefore the following research questions are addressed:
(1)
How frequent is loss experience within individuals aged 75 years and older and what types of social loss experience exist in this age group?
(2)
How frequent are unmet needs in individuals aged 75 years and older with loss experience compared to individuals without loss?
(3)
How is loss experience associated with unmet needs in the elderly? What other factors play a role in this context?
Discussion
The current study delivers data on loss experiences and unmet needs among the representative German population aged 75 years and older. Furthermore, this study provides data on the association between loss experiences, socio-demographic and clinical factors and the frequency of unmet needs. As a main result, our study showed that loss experiences, especially those of a close family member, play an important role with regard to negative health outcomes such as unmet care needs.
Our results on the frequency of loss experiences (29.7%) were comparable to the results of a previous study [
33] that found that 23% of participants reported a recent loss. However, comparison of results is possible only to a limited extent because these authors only focused on nonspousal loss experiences in a much younger sample compared to our study (65+ vs. 75+ years). The current study, allowed a broader assessment of social loss experiences taking into account various categories of lost loved ones including close family losses, other relatives losses and non-family losses. This represents a substantial extension compared to previous research mainly focusing on spousal loss experiences and effects of widowhood on health and psychological outcomes [
3,
4,
34‐
36].
Our data showed that approximately 50% of the sample aged 75+ years and older was widowed at the time of the baseline assessment. This is in line with findings that widowed individuals appear to be older and the proportion of widows and widowers raises with increasing age [
33,
37]. Further, the incidence rates of widowhood become less frequent in very old age [
38]. Correspondingly, close family losses (including spousal loss) occurred less often in our sample and the most frequently reported loss experiences within the chosen time frame of the last 12 months were other relative losses, followed by non-family losses. While there is great consensus in scientific literature that loss experiences represent negative life events in older adults with large negative impact on health outcomes [
5], there is almost no knowledge about the association of loss experience and unmet care needs in the oldest old. Thus, our data confirm earlier findings that loss experiences are associated with negative health outcomes such as lower life satisfaction [
7], depressive symptoms and decreased functional status [
38]. In addition, our study results show that loss experience is also associated with increased psychological and physical unmet care needs in this population.
In fact, the present study findings show that close family losses had the most relevant impact on unmet needs as compared to other relative losses and non-family losses. This finding does not seem surprising behind the backdrop that spouses or children often assist with a great number of daily acitivities, such as personal care or household tasks [
12,
39]. Nevertheless, also elderly people with non-family losses showed unmet needs in a variety of categories. This finding is underlined by the results of a Dutch representative survey [
40]. Accordingly, informal caregivers such as friends or neighbors play an important role in providing care for elderly people [
40]. Consequently, not only close family losses, but also non-family losses may strongly affect elderly people with regard to unmet care needs. Clinicians such as general practitioners should take this into account when evaluating the care situation of an elderly person in their daily practice.
Other authors reported that loss experiences were linked to increased mortality [
5]. Moreover, Jin and Chrisatakis showed that the link between increased mortality risk after spousal loss is mediated by a decline in quality of health care [
9]. Thus, the associations between loss experiences and negative health consequences seem to be very complex and the consideration of unmet health care needs after loss experiences is strongly recommended in late life.
It has been shown that health and psychological problems mostly occur in the first 12 months after a loss [
5,
38]. In line with this, our study suggests that loss experiences are strongly associated with a higher number of unmet psychological and physical care needs after holding other factors constant. Our study also confirms previous results on risk factors for increased unmet needs including a higher age, marital status, depression, decreased social engagement and more severe morbidity [
15,
25,
41‐
43]. Thus, the current and earlier findings highlight the importance of the implementation of tailored intervention programs targeting at high-risk older adults with recent loss experiences. The early and reliable detection of unmet needs via the CANE in this high-risk population of bereaved elderly may prevent serious risks or the development of physical and mental diseases. In this context, the association between loss experiences and unmet needs may have been affected by other variables that could not be taken into account in the current study, for example, personality factors or coping styles. Here, complex associations can be assumed and future studies should also consider such influencing factors.
Strengths and limitations
Major strengths of our study refer to the population-representative database and the large sample size allowing transferability (generalizability) of study results to individuals aged 75 years and older in everyday health care conditions. To our knowledge, the current study was the first attempt to analyze the association between loss experiences and unmet needs in the oldest old population in Germany. Higher age groups represent an important target group, as both losses and the associated increased risk of unmet needs are of particular relevance. Need assessment was based on the adapted German version of the CANE, which represents an established method for the reliable and valid determination of met and unmet needs in the elderly [
15,
16].
In this study, a telephone survey was conducted. In addition to economic aspects, an advantage of this method may has been that individuals may be more likely to talk about sensitive issues, problems, and associated unmet needs due to the relative anonymity of a phone call compared to a direct personal conversation. This could have counteracted the finding that in old age problems and complaints often remain undetected, tabooed or masked. As a result, prejudices or effects of social desirability, which are assumed to be increasingly manifested in face-to-face interactions, may have been reduced [
44,
45].
However, this study is also subject to several limitations. The response rate of the telephone survey was only 42.3%. Therefore a potential recruitment bias may not completely be ruled out. With regard to the interview mode, possible distortionary effects cannot be completely ruled out. For example, telephone surveys may be associated with increased cognitive effort, and fatigue of respondents and interviewers as well as response tendencies could have occurred [
45]. This circumstance was taken into account insofar as breaks were taken if necessary or the interview was divided and continued at another time. In order to counteract monotony and possible stereotypical answer patterns, the question order and length of the interview was created in a way to reduce respondent burden. Additionally, the interview was tested and adapted in a pretest before the start of the main survey. All interviewers received extensive training in order to ensure the reliability and validity of the information obtained through the telephone survey. Furthermore, the present study was based on cross-sectional data that do not allow causal statements. In addition, the current study refers to a broad time frame of “the last 12 months” for social loss experiences. Future studies should take more detailed information with regard to the time since loss into account.
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