Adults May Require Different Interventions for Loneliness Depending on Age

The factors impacting adults ’ feelings of loneliness change depending on their phase in life, suggesting there is no “one-size-fits-all” intervention to reduce loneliness, according to astudy published inBMC Public Health.“[T]he factors associated with loneliness vary across different age groups and therefore policymakers and intervention developers should take these factors into account in efforts to reduce loneliness among adults,” wrote Thanée Franssen, M.Sc., of Maastricht University in the Netherlands and c olleagues.The authors used data from the Adult Health Monitor Limburg 2016, a population-based health survey that monitors the self-reported health of adults in the Netherlands between the ages of 19 and 65. The authors split the 26,342 adult participants into three groups: young (19 to 34 years), early middle-aged (35 to 49 years), and late middle-aged (50 to 65 years).The survey collected information on participants ’ demographics (including gender, education, marital status, ethnicity, and employment status), social environment (including living arrangement; volunteer work; frequency of contact with family, friends, or neighbors; and whether they feel excluded from society), and health factors (including any limitations in daily activities due to health problems, chronic disease diagnoses, and levels of psychological distress). The researchers used the Dutch Mental Health Continuum-Short Form to determine participants’ psychological, emotional, and ...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: BMC Public Health loneliness Than ée Franssen Source Type: research