The Correlates of Loneliness

This chapter discusses the potential for a history of loneliness. It opens up historical handling of loneliness as a theme, pointing to the issues of health, coping strategies, theories of change, locational questions, and issues concerning the family and historical demography. It assesses how lone-living influences analysis of loneliness, and considers in this connection the marked growth of sole living in Western societies.

The objectives of this article are to analyse: 1) the relation between dimensions of the adolescent perception of parental relationship with them to adolescent functional/dysfunctional coping; 2) the relation between adolescent feelings of loneliness to adolescent functional/dysfunctional coping; 3) the relation between the adolescent perception of parental relationship with them with their feelings of loneliness, 4) the relation between adolescent perception of parental relationship with them with coping, meditated by feelings of loneliness.

The abridged and adapted version of Frydenberg and Lewis’ (1997) Adolescent Coping Scale, CRPBI (Schaefer,1965) adapted and abridged in Argentina, and the Adolescents’ Loneliness Assessment (Richaud & Sacchi, 2004) were administered to a sample of 950 Argentine middle class adolescents, aged 13 to 16.

The results suggest that even though during adolescence, parental styles keep acting on dysfunctional coping with conflict, they do so with less intensity in direct ways, but above all they influence feelings of loneliness and through these on coping.

Loneliness is a universal experience and may be either persistent and continuous or short lived. This chapter examines loneliness and its correlates in everyday life, loneliness in school children, what contributes to it, and what can be done to assist the children to cope with it.

Loneliness is a subjective, distressing feeling of being disconnected from a desired group or intimate relationship. Most children and adolescents experience loneliness at some time but for 10-20% of young people it can be severe and chronic. While there are many avenues for help for distressed young people, such as friends and family as well as the professional help of counselors and psychologists, lonely young people often do not seek help. Technological resources such as self-help information websites, social networking sites and web-based help-lines are some ways which lonely young people try to ameliorate their loneliness. These methods are cost effective, accessible, constantly updated and often provide anonymity. It is unknown how effective information sites are for loneliness but it is known that social networking sites such as Facebook do not always reduce feelings of loneliness. In addition, from the records of web-based help-lines it would seem that lonely young people do not often utilize these services. The reasons for loneliness in young people still not being addressed by technology are discussed.

This chapter explores the inextricably linked relationship between peer victimization and loneliness in school-aged children and youth. Students who are lonely demonstrate solitary and withdrawn behaviors, have low self-esteem, few friends, and are generally more vulnerable to peer victimization. Chronic and prolonged victimization reinforces marginalization and helplessness, exacerbating the loneliness experience in these youngsters. Starting with an overview of the concepts of peer victimization (aka bullying) and loneliness, the author describes their adverse impacts, predictors, and correlates. The author reviews the extant literature on promising interventions for loneliness and peer victimization in children and youth within a multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) framework. Specific interventions examined include social support interventions, cognitive behavioral approaches, and anti-bullying curriculum and programs.

The transition to college normatively involves major network changes, and it enhances the experience of loneliness. These transitions are stressful and challenging and especially for students who may move away from home as they start university, leaving behind family and social support systems. The chapter reviews the literature regarding loneliness of university students, and includes the second author’s sharing of her own loneliness in university, during her undergraduate studies.

Loneliness is a common but distressing psychological state in which actual levels of social contact fall below desired levels of contact. Loneliness is a stressful experience that motivates affiliation as a form of redress. However, when people are unsuccessful at forming the social connections that reduce loneliness, well-being and quality of life can suffer dramatically. For some people loneliness may stem from family of origin processes such as social learning or heritability. Loneliness is even possible in the context of romantic or marital relationships when the relationship exhibits markers of poor quality. In either context the lack of social integration puts lonely people at risk for a range of negative outcomes. In the domain of health related quality of life, loneliness has been conceptualized as a pathway to disease. Abundant research evidence indicates that loneliness represents a risk for poor cardiovascular fitness, poor immune functioning, psychological and physical health complications associated with cancer, chronic illness, and all-cause mortality. Numerous theoretical mechanisms have been posited to explain the relationship between loneliness and poor health including stress processes, degraded recuperative processes, and compromised health behaviors. Although study of the potential causal mechanisms by which loneliness may contribute to the development of health problems is still in its infancy, current research indicates that loneliness is best conceptualized as a psychological construct that, when chronic, has a serious potential for pathophysiological effects on the human body.

It has been argued that loneliness generates inequality in multiple ways. It creates health gaps between population groups, differential risks of premature death, and selective deficits in social wellbeing. It has been shown to have serious negative consequences on people’s mental and physical health and to affect the performance of individuals in various fields of life—over both the short and long run. More specifically, loneliness has been argued to trigger the emergence or exacerbation of mental and somatic diseases, to predict premature work disability and excessive alcohol consumption, to limit opportunities for increasing the social capital, and to reinforce the negative consequences of unemployment and poverty.

We studied the predictors, interrelations, and self-evaluated consequences of loneliness among a population-level database of Finnish people. The sample consisted of 17,258 Finnish adults aged 30 to 60 years. Based on lonely people’s self-reports, loneliness has resulted in a great deal of negative health, psychosocial well-being, and economic related consequences. Overall, loneliness explained 57 percent of the men’s and 54 percent of the women’s health and psychosocial problems and 69 percent of the men’s and 59 percent of the women’s self-reported problems in drinking and eating. For economic problems, the corresponding values were 14 percent for men and 12 percent for women. The importance of identifying loneliness in the prevention of psychosocial and economic issues, substance abuse, and eating disorders and negative consequences on health is discussed. Based on our findings, we argue that there is a legitimate reason to consider loneliness as a form of social inequality and discuss the possible ways of intervening in the loneliness of individuals.

The study explored the associations between marital status, coping, loneliness and wellbeing. The analyses were based on data from 196 women and men (Mage = 45.94 years; 54% were women; 34% were married, 32% were widowed, and 34% were divorced) who completed inventories assessing feelings of loneliness, and wellbeing measured by life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. The widowed and divorced respondents also assessed their coping strategies with widowhood or divorce, respectively. Marital status (married vs. widowed/divorced) moderated the effects of loneliness on wellbeing, with stronger negative associations of high loneliness with lower wellbeing in widowhood and divorce. The widowed and divorced persons differed, the widowed being higher than the divorced on emotionfocused coping and loneliness and lower on problem-focused coping, life satisfaction and positive affect. Moreover, problem-focused coping mediated the effects of widowhood vs. divorce on life satisfaction, positive affect and loneliness; and loneliness mediated the effects of both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping on wellbeing measures. These findings suggest that widowed and divorced individuals can benefit from interventions which apply strategies of problem-focused coping with loss or separation to modify loneliness and contribute to wellbeing.