Frailty among older adults: explorimg the social dimension

Because more people grow old, also the chance to become frail increases. From the findings in this thesis it becomes clear that frailty of older adults comprises more than just the physical domain, but that there are also problems in the psychological, social and cognitive domains, and that these problems coexist. An important result from this thesis is a new definition of social frailty, strongly based on scientific literature, which has been structured by using the social needs concept of Social Production Function theory as a heuristic. This new definition has also been validated by the experiences of social frailty of community dwelling and assisted living older adults. From these experiences it became clear, that for some older adults living independent in the community can make them more socially frail. Finally this thesis results in two measurement instruments for cognitive and social frailty. These instruments have been cross-culturally adapted and validated for use in the Dutch context. They can be used by health care or welfare professionals to gain better insights in the cognitive and social domains of frailty among older adults.