Leisure as a Mean of Older People’s Integration (Based on the Example of Silesian Voivodeship Inhabitants)

Abstract

Older people are becoming more and more numerous and starting to form an important part of Polish society. Thus they are important consumers and beneficiaries of various services, but gerontologists indicate some general problems faced by senior citizens: their solitude, illnesses, disabilities, poverty and the feeling of being useless. All of these problems cause social exclusion of older people. According to the social theory of active aging, activity is a psychical and social need of every person regardless of age. Therefore elderly people should be active, because it maintains their good psychophysical condition and long life. Seniors have a lot of free time—and they would be able to spend it in many different ways if only they could overcome the aforementioned problems. These problems become more serious as society (and its institutions) seems to be oblivious to the specific needs and problems of seniors. The main purpose of this chapter is to show, how older inhabitants of the Silesian Voivodeship spend their leisure; who they spend their leisure time with, the kind of problems that are connected with spending their leisure time and the ways in which they would like to spend their free time. Such diagnosis of the situation of older people will identify areas (also potential areas) of senior citizens' activity. This chapter is based on quantitative research conducted in 2011 on 100 inhabitants of Mikolow—one of the Silesian towns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)