The purpose of this study was to update a literature review of scientific production about friendship of the elderly people in the period of 2005 to 2009. The study categorized the documents at national and international on the type of research, academic authors, gender and place of publication. In this work, the friendship of the elders was analyzed from residential and institutional contexts. The study revealed that resources for conceptualization the of the theme are still scarce. For this reason, most of them resulted from empirical work. This indicates a concept of friendship that is still in construction and is related to risk factors such as loneliness, depression, immobility and suicide. This observation makes the topic relevant to reflect on the importance of the work of a multidisciplinary team in the process of building new friendships in the lives of elderly people in different contexts.
Friendship; aged; quality of life