Epidemiology of loneliness in a cohort of UK mental health community crisis service users

Jingyi Wang · Brynmor Lloyd‐Evans · Louise Marston · Ruimin Ma · Farhana Mann · Francesca Solmi +1 more

53 citations0/0 files storedSocial Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Health disparities and outcomes Psychiatric care and mental health services Mental Health Treatment and Access

Abstract

PURPOSE: Loneliness is an important issue for mental health service users. However, it has not been a particularly prominent focus of recent mental health research. This paper aimed to explore the severity of loneliness among people leaving mental health community crisis services, and to identify factors associated with loneliness. METHODS: A total of 399 participants experiencing mental health crises recruited for a research trial from community crisis services were included in this cross-sectional study. They completed the eight-item measure of the University of California at Los Angeles Loneliness Scale and a set of instruments assessing socio-demographic, psychosocial, and psychiatric variables. RESULTS: Severity of loneliness was high among people leaving community crisis services. Longer years since first contact with mental health services (2-10 years, coefficient = 1.83, 95% CI 0.49-3.16; more than 10 years, coefficient = 1.91, 95% CI 0.46-3.36) and more severe affective symptoms (coefficient = 0.32, 95% CI 0.23-0.40) were associated with greater loneliness, whereas bigger social network size (coefficient = - 0.56, 95% CI - 0.76 to - 0.36) and greater social capital (coefficient = - 0.16, 95% CI - 0.31 to - 0.003) were associated with less severe loneliness. CONCLUSIONS: This paper supports a view that people experiencing mental health crises often report relatively severe loneliness, and that loneliness tends to become more severe during the course of illness. A greater awareness of loneliness among mental health professionals may be beneficial. Loneliness is a potential focus of the development of interventions to improve the lives and outcomes of people with significant mental health problems.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 53 citations exist upstream.

References

2015Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality 1980The revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: Concurrent and discriminant validity evidence.2004A Short Scale for Measuring Loneliness in Large Surveys 2009Perceived social isolation and cognition 1983Loneliness: A Source Book of Current Theory, Research and Therapy 1988Structures And Processes Of Social Support 2010A Meta-Analysis of Interventions to Reduce Loneliness 2018Associations between loneliness and perceived social support and outcomes of mental health problems: a systematic review

Cited by

2021Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and well-being of adults with mental health conditions in the UK: a qualitative interview study 2021Trajectories of loneliness and objective social isolation and associations between persistent loneliness and self-reported personal recovery in a cohort of secondary mental health service users in the UK 2023Gender-specific association of loneliness and health care use in community-dwelling older adults 2021Associations between loneliness and acute hospitalisation outcomes among patients receiving mental healthcare in South London: a retrospective cohort study

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.