ABSTRACT
For the elderly residents, living in an environment that consists exclusively of elderly people and staff members, and receiving social services without thinking too much has gradually changed them into ‘institutional human beings.’1 Their daily life tends to become stereotyped: everything is managed around routines with little stimulation and few excitements. Difficulties in making friends who have real sympathy with each other have made the residents maintain only casual relationships with others. Under such circumstances, who are their sources of emotional support? Who brings the occasional excitement and joy to their prosaic life? For some people it is their beloved families; for some, it is their old friends; and for others it may be the volunteers and trainee students who have no direct interests in common with the home. Coming to the home on different trajectories, visitors are the third group whose existence can directly or indirectly influence the lives of the elderly people.
