Nearly 40,000 elderly people in Auckland alone are experiencing loneliness and amid a pandemic, it's only made the situation worse.
Phyllis Reid is in her nineties and says 2020 has been particularly hard.
“It has been a very difficult year in my 90th year because I had to give up all my group things that I belong to because I could no longer get to them,” she told 1 NEWS.
Amid the lockdown this year, it’s meant Reid did not see anyone for five months at one stage.
“What does loneliness feel like? Um... It's a bit like being in a barren world,” she says.
Reid is one of an estimated 37,000 Aucklanders over the age of 65 who experience loneliness.
Age Concern Auckland CEO, Kevin Lamb says Christmas can be particularly difficult for the elderly.
“When we get towards Christmas and the holiday season it becomes even more acute, even more impactful and a lot of those people are going to be very very sad and very very alone over Christmas,” he says.
Age Concern is helping fill in the missing pieces of Reid’s life, organising volunteer visitors to ease the stress.
It’s organised for Stacey Morrisey and her son to visit once a week for the last three months.
“I think she's way more active and jollier every time I come, she loves seeing Luca. He'll come in and read her some jokes from his joke books or do her a drawing or make her laugh,” Morrisey says.
Reid says the visits have turned her year around.
“I've got to think of somebody else rather than myself. It's good,” she says.
Age Concern is now calling on others to help.
“If we know there are older people in our communities, our next door neighbours, on the opposite side of the street, reach out to them make sure they're OK. Just knowing that someone is there looking out for them makes an enormous amount of difference,” Lamb says.
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