Feb. 17, 2022
Seneca News
Older adult newcomers ‘forgotten’, Seneca researchers find
Report details crisis ‘magnified’ during pandemic
While day-to-day life is difficult for many seniors in Canada, a Seneca applied research project has found the challenges older adult newcomers face have become even more pronounced during the pandemic.
“Senior immigrants told us how their hardships were magnified during the pandemic,” said Dr. Bahar Biazar, who teaches at Seneca’s English Language Institute. “This got my research team and me thinking how the entire settlement process in Canada is geared toward attracting and supporting productive young immigrants. The older group is being forgotten.”
With funding from Seneca Innovation, Dr. Biazar partnered with the Intercultural Iranian Canadian Resource Centre (I2CRC) to conduct research on how older adult immigrants from I2CRC coped during the pandemic. She was assisted by Sasha Mozaffari, an Honours Bachelor of Commerce – Human Resources Management student, and Crystal Kwan, an Office Administration – Executive graduate, who now teaches in the School of Legal, Public & Office Administration.
Their report, Senior Newcomers Coping With Crisis, details stories resulting from interviews with nine older adult newcomers from Iran, two caregivers who provided support to a senior newcomer during the pandemic and two I2CRC board members.
Dr. Biazar said the research findings were unexpected.
“The level of isolation and loneliness experienced by these seniors was more than what most people experienced,” she said. “Some of them hadn’t talked to anyone for days. One of them had 15 books in her house when the lockdown began, and she had read each one five times.”
Others were getting forgetful and struggled to read their mail, the research also revealed. Many didn’t know the language or their local bus route. Some had mobility issues and lived on poverty-level pensions. People were communicating with neighbours across the street by switching lights on and off.
“In some cases, these are life-and-death situations that bring on a significant level of mental health issues.” — Dr. Bahar Biazar
“In some cases, these are life-and-death situations that bring on a significant level of mental health issues,” Dr. Biazar said. “A lot of the seniors were doing ‘second-hand therapy’ in which the person who could afford the therapy told the others what the therapist said. Some were having imaginary conversations with their therapist. Some were outright crying.”
While the participants were all Iranians, Dr. Biazar, who is also Iranian, said the hardships the older adults experienced were not cultural.
“The ethnicity or nationality didn’t play that much of a role,” she said. “The issues that came up were a lack of extended family, no networks or knowledge as to navigating the systems here. They were not specific to the Iranian Canadian community.”
Through policy changes, Dr. Biazar hopes things will start to improve for older adult immigrants.
“COVID-19 revealed many things in our society,” she said. “My hope is that when policy makers get together to review what is needed and what is lacking, that they don’t forget this population.”