SOCIAL CAPITAL ROLE IN ADDRESSING AGING PARENTS LONELINESS

The challenges of caring for aging parents have different inputs and outputs; however, the one common factor that appears in both ends is the challenge of maintaining their social capital, regardless of their condition. In this paper, the social capital relevant to loneliness is addressed. The author, as a close carer, reviews the work that helped in addressing social capital maintenance, besides the mitigation mechanisms of both loneliness and its impact on cognitive decline. Based on the strategic framework that is synthesized from the literature, a communication model is proposed for close carers and the concerned stakeholders. The framework and the communication model mitigate the risks of loneliness by optimizing the social capital of the aging parents, and raising the best approaches for quality of life.