Is social isolation hazardous to your health?
Jake Jones first came to the Senior Center in Castleton about a year ago. It was his wife’s idea. He needed something to help fill his days after a stroke took away his ability to drive.
“It was something to do and a place to go.” said Jones, 87, who lives in Sperryville. “It provides something I couldn’t get at home. Things that I no longer have. That’s why I’m here.”
He added: “Most of us here had pretty active lives. But things happen, and you see that life isn’t coming back.”
Carol Patton, 84, is another regular. She began going to the center with her husband, after he suffered a stroke and could no longer drive. In time, his health deteriorated and she started coming alone. For Patton, now a widow living in Amissville, it’s been restorative.
“I love coming here because of the different activities — learning new things, being with people,” she said. “If we didn’t have this, we would just sit at home and worry about our problems. It uplifts you being here.”
Jones and Patton are part of a widening slice of the Rappahannock community. Slightly more than 1,900 residents — or 28% of the local population — now are 65 or older, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. That’s almost twice the state percentage. Also, 38.5% of households in the county include someone 65 or older; and in about 14%, a person 65 or older lives alone.
Dorothy M. of Culpeper, originally from the Bronx, never learned how to drive. After her husband passed a few years ago, she uses vans provided by Encompass Community Supports to go to the Rappahannock Senior Center in Castleton. (Photo/Luke Christopher)
Health consequences
The aging of Rappahannock comes at a time of deepening worry about how social isolation affects the mental and physical health of older Americans. Most notably, a 2023 report by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy concludes that people who feel lonely and disconnected can suffer significant physical consequences — an impact it likens to the ill effect of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
That, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would mean an increased risk for older people of heart attacks, strokes, Type 2 diabetes and depression. It could also accelerate the effects of dementia, the devastating condition that, according to a recent study published in the medical journal Nature Medicine, is almost twice as likely to affect Americans over 55 than previously thought.
Gloria Switzer cuts the hair of LaDrewe Parroff, 77. Originally from the Mississippi Delta of Arkansas, she moved to Rappahannock because of her health issues and to be closer to her son. The Senior Center offers haircuts every few months. (Photo/Luke Christopher)
“I see when people get isolated and they stop coming here, they can go down so quickly, and we lose them,” said Darcy Canton, manager of the Senior Center. “I can’t say for a fact that it’s because people are alone, but often it’s not very long before they take a downward turn.”
The COVID pandemic clearly made matters worse. As Canton pointed out, older people who usually had fewer social outings to begin with could no longer even go to church or get out for an occasional meal. Some fell into bad habits, losing interest in eating well and staying active, particularly if they had to rely on others for transportation.
“We’d reach out and tell them, ‘Come for part of a day. Come for an hour. Get your daughter to bring you,’” she said. “Just to get them out of the house and back in with everybody, so that they will engage again. But sometimes, once the decline starts, once that ball starts rolling, it’s really hard to stop.”
Rappahannock Senior Center manager Darcy Canton prepares lunch for the group. (Photo/Luke Christopher)
Shrinking worlds
So, how many people living alone in the county could be at some risk? That’s a difficult number for local nonprofits and churches to nail down.
“Our concern has been for a while that there’s a pretty high number of isolated folks we just haven’t identified,” said the Rev. Walt Childress, pastor of Washington Baptist Church and a board member of the Rappahannock Benevolent Fund.
Rappahannock Benevolent Fund executive director Berni Olson. (Photo/Luke Christopher)
“But in many of those cases, people prefer to be isolated. When we try to reach out or engage them, they normally don’t respond to that. So we have to balance trying to see if they need anything without imposing.
“You know, caring people want to help,” he added, “and sometimes I have a hard time convincing them that there are appropriate boundaries. If people let us know they want to be left alone, we have no right to impose.”
That’s not to say that anyone who is socially isolated is lonely and risking a downward spiral. On the contrary, as Renee Norden, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Fauquier County, noted, “There are people who are happy campers, spending time alone. Reading their books or working on their hobbies by themselves. They have the amount of interaction they prefer.”
Berni Olson, executive director of the Benevolent Fund, agreed. “Us rural people, we kind of choose to live this way. We need our social contact, but we all love our time away from people, our time out on the hills.”
Renee Norden, executive director of Mental Health Association of Fauquier County. (Photo/Luke Christopher)
Still, without social connections, older people may be more likely to withdraw into a shrinking world that’s familiar and seemingly secure. And that can bring its own risks. Olson pointed out that much of the financial help the Benevolent Fund provides for home repairs goes to seniors, who in some cases, are living in deteriorating houses.
“We have three cases where people are in homes where they really shouldn’t be. One house is a tear-down. Another is becoming one,” she said. “But they make the choice to stay, and that’s their choice. I get why they don’t want to leave.
“But I think we have to change this drum beat of ‘I’m going to stay in my house until I die.’ Because it’s not working for some people.”
Social fears
Those who work closely with seniors in the county face multiple challenges. One is the mindset Olson cited. Norden agreed: “As we get older, we sort of get stuck,” she said. “And people hold on to the idea that where I am now has to be better than wherever else I would end up.”
That can result in older people trying to hide their infirmities, particularly from their children. Canton said she has seen that at the Senior Center. “I’ve had some people fall here, but they don’t call their children to tell them, because they don’t want to be put in a home,” she said.
The same fear can cause them to have fewer social interactions. If someone is experiencing hearing loss or is becoming more forgetful, it not only can make it more difficult to engage with others, it also can make them seem less able to take care of themselves. And at the same time, such afflictions can push others away.
“Cognitive decline can directly affect social isolation,” said Gail Crooks, director of social services in the county. “Maybe someone is not as friendly, so other people may start to withdraw from them because the interactions with them just aren’t as pleasant. Or their own fear of interacting increases.That change can happen so quickly that someone who seemed fine six months ago may be in a very challenging position today.”
There’s also the desire to be left alone. It’s not unusual for older members of the community to ignore or reject suggestions from their children to engage with nonprofits such as Rapp at Home or Encompass Community Supports — organizations that tend to have more volunteers who want to help seniors than there are seniors who want their help.
“Many people of that generation don’t feel comfortable asking for help. They just figure they’ll get through things,” said Kathleen Watson, coordinator for the Mobile Outreach program at Encompass, which focuses on connecting with isolated seniors.
“But that’s really hard,” she said. “It’s also potentially dangerous because if you don’t have someone who you talk to on a regular basis, or maybe you live back off the road and people don’t see if you’re coming and going, you could end up lying on the floor unconscious and no one would find you.”
Rappahannock Department of Social Services Director Gail Crooks in her then-new office at Rush River Commons last November. (Photo/Luke Christopher)
Growing concern
For almost 20 years, the county’s Sheriff’s Office has provided a daily check-in service for residents older than 65. If a person who has signed up hasn’t phoned the office by 11 a.m., they receive a call. If they don’t respond, a sheriff’s deputy stops by to make sure they’re okay. Typically, according to Sheriff Connie Compton, about 10 seniors are on the list, although during COVID, the number soared to 85.
“When we go to check on them, sometimes we may be the only people they see,” she said. “And you know, as much as we would love to stay and talk with them for a while, we can’t always do that, because we have other calls.”
For Compton, a Rappahannock native, social isolation among seniors is a growing concern. ”I think older people may feel they’re a bother sometimes.”
She shared a story about a woman to whom she suggested visiting the Senior Center.
“I told her that they play games there, they paint, they do different things,” Compton remembered. “But she seemed very nervous about going there. She said, ‘No, I’m okay. I’ll just stay here in my home.’ She wouldn’t go.
“It would have been great for her to go and have that socialization with other women her age, right?
“But she wouldn’t go.”
