This study has demonstrated the power of being involved in everyday life activities. The proposed model, explaining individuals' desire to continue to live an active life despite a progressive loss of functioning, can provide a model to help the reasoning of professionals when supporting patients in their everyday life.

The findings suggest that the loss of positive belief in enjoyable occupations can be a sign of reduced hope in late life. For occupational therapists, whether an older adult has made a conscious choice to withdraw from occupational life or has too few occupational choices is important to distinguish.

No abstract

The participants in the day care group and the comparison group reported similar levels of perceived functioning and symptoms, as measured by the EORTC QLQ-30, with no significant differences between the groups. However, the day care group reported higher levels of emotional well-being as measured by the MACL than the comparison group reported, although these differences were not statistically significant.

As it develops, an ageing society has increased need of services that can promote the health and well-being of the elderly. Community-based day programmes are one kind of service intended to support elderly people with restricted function in their daily lives. There are several different forms of day programmes for the elderly in Sweden, but guidelines are vague about their aim and implementation and little is known about the persons using them. The aim of this study was to identify characteristics of the elderly people living in their own home who participated in social day centres in comparison with participants who attended a rehabilitative day centre. The focus was on perceived functioning and competence in daily life. Twelve social day centre participants and 12 rehabilitative day centre participants answered two questionnaires, the sickness impact profile (SIP) and occupational self-assessment (OSA). The results show that the majority of participants from both centres were elderly persons living alone who experienced severely restricted physical function. This demonstrates that the day centres serve the needs of a specific group of elderly people, namely, those with highly restricted functioning living on their own. A significant difference between the groups was that those who attended the social day centre perceived better psychosocial function than the group attending the rehabilitative centre. The fact that the social centre group had better psychosocial function than the other group, but yet had severely restricted physical function indicates that it is preferably the psychosocial well-being of elderly persons with restricted functioning that is possible to influence. This result implies that these centres serve as an important meeting place for elderly persons who would otherwise be isolated in their homes because of their physical restrictions. To fulfil this challenge, the day centres might need to accommodate a wider range of persons with restricted functioning.