Empty Nest Old Man Living Condition And Countermeasure Study Of Social Work

At the end of last century, population over60years old in our country has been more than10%. While China has become one of the aging countries, the size of Chinese family is becoming smaller and smaller. Because of the influence of one-child policy, China’s family patterns have transferred from traditional families with many children into the nuclear family. In addition, because adult children tend to be independent or work in different places, the elderly people have to live alone. As a result, there are so many elderly people becoming empty-nesters, that is, the elderly not living with their children. According to data released by the National Committee on Aging, the proportion of China’s urban elderly empty-nest families (including living alone) reached49.7%. Large and medium have a higher percentage of56.1%. Studying of Empty nesters has great social significance in today’s China, and in-depth understanding of social support and mental health issues of the empty nesters is especially important for social workers to take more targeted, more strategic intervention. This article lists the cases of three different ages of empty-nesters, and makes a detailed and in-depth analysis on the social support status and mental health status of each case. After a summary of these cases, we can find that social support status of the empty nesters can be divided into formal support and informal support. Formal support is support from the government, community and NGOs, and informal support refers to social support from individuals, including the support of strong ties and weak ties. Empty-nesters’psychological problems show different characteristics at different stages. Main problems of the young elderly does not apply for the role conversion, the milled-age elderly may face problems such as anxiety and depression, and senior elderly may face the problem is hypochondriacal mood because of the physical decline. Empty-nesters of all ages are facing the psychological problems of empty nest syndrome. For social support and mental health issues faced with the empty-nesters, we can bring up the following suggestions:firstly, making an accurate assessment of the status of empty-nesters; secondly, integrated application of a variety of professional work methods; thirdly, combining with the home care service system; lastly, providing multi-level services for different age groups.