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Many older adults suffer from loneliness. Loneliness is a distressing feeling that leads to poor quality of life, cognitive impairment, increased use of health services and permanent institutional care, and impaired survival (Rabin, 2000 ; Routasalo & Pitkälä, 2003). To address this problem, a psychosocial group intervention for older adults was created at our institution to relieve their loneliness and to enhance friendships among participants. The intervention used art to help them reach, reflect, and share their feelings of loneliness with each other (Routasalo, Tilvis, Pitkälä, 2004). The healthcare professionals who would be implementing the intervention needed knowledge and a deep understanding of both older adults' experiences of loneliness and the importance of aesthetic forms of expression in later life. Therefore, an education program called "Images of Lonelinessâ[euro]* was developed for the healthcare professionals.
The aims of training healthcare workers for the psychosocial group intervention have been described in a previous article (Pitkälä, Blomqvist, Routasalo, & Saarenheimo, 2004). In this article, we focus on using art as an educational method. We used works of art to deepen theoretical knowledge of loneliness and promote self-reflection capabilities among the healthcare professionals as group leaders. Our training process consciously took advantage of constructive learning theories and the reflective model of learning by Kolb (1984) and Schön (1987).
Art plays a significant role in modern caring sciences. It is a skillful interpreter of emotions, and it touches the souls of thousands of people when it presents a universally evocative topic. The tacit knowledge in art helps us to better understand others and ourselves. Education through aesthetics and reflective models of learning in the education of healthcare professionals have been emphasized by earlier research (Bevis & Watson, 1989 ; Carper, 1978 ; Ekebergh, Lepp, & Dahlberg, 2004 ; Eriksson, 1985 ; Högström & Tolonen, 1990 ; Watson, 1979 ; Whitman & Rose, 2003 ; Wikström, 1997, 2001a, 2001b, 2003).
Theoretical Background
American philosopher John Dewey (1934) and German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1997) dealt with art or aesthetic experiences as special kinds of experiences. According to Dewey, art experience is an intensified form of an ordinary experience that does not solely belong to arenas of official art such as museums and concert halls. They tried to restore continuity between works of...