[Factors of lonely living in old psychiatric patients]

70 lonely patients 60-83 years old were examined. Loneliness in the disintegrated first group (54 patients) resulted from the disintegrated family (the patients were early married). The loneliness in the second group was determined by the absence of their own family (16 patients). The main factors leading to loneliness were such diseases as schizophrenia and epilepsy, paranoic disorders of persecutive character directed to the nearest family, hypochondric depression, psychopathic-like disturbances, mental defect, personality disorders in premorbid state. Among social-psychologic factors the following ones had a significance: underestimation of the mental disorders in patients by their relatives, conflicts in the family, the patient's negative orientation to marriage, their deep emotional interrelation with the parents in young and mature age, alcoholism of married couple and special psychopathic features of the relatives. The events relating with the old age (loss of elderly couple), separation with adult children and parents, bad domestic living conditions were of less significance.