Isolation Week 20th - 26th June 2011

This week, a team of volunteers are taking part in an experiment run by Friends of the Elderly, to see how people cope with isolation. For one week, they will be living alone, cut off from the world around them - no conversations, no phones, no internet or interaction with anybody else - with just a TV for company.

Currently, over one million older people in the UK live isolated and lonely lives. A million more feel trapped in their own homes and one in five older people see other people less than once a week.

To make the volunteers' experiences more realistic, there are socks to fill with dried peas, beans and popcorn kernels which will mimic the painful sensation of walking on arthritic feet.

Distorting, fuzzy glasses give an impression of what it is like to live with impaired vision like cataracts or glaucoma.

And diving gloves will make it hard to pick things up or to manipulate simple items like a knife and fork as though you had arthritis.

"All the equipment is designed to reproduce the physical challenges of ageing as well as the mental toll that living an isolated life can bring." say Friends of the Elderly

Mark Sadler