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The concept of successful aging encompasses the avoidance of disease and disability, the maintenance of high physical and cognitive function, and sustained engagement in social and productive activities. However, social relations for most of older people are getting weaker owing to experiencing a variety of lossess and unhealthiness as the time goes on, and thus they need some help from someone and receive the help. The purpose of this article is to review the importance of developing and maintaining the social relations, while focusing on emotional support, for the older people in staying healthy as well as recovering their health. The structural and functional aspects of social support, different types of social support, effect of losing a primary source of social support (spouse), quantity and quality of social support, perceived social support and so on were concretely discussed in this article. It was mentioned how to measure emotional support in the last part of this article.
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