Recording: Online Webinar | Chronic Loneliness & Mental Health

2nd December 2024

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyI_uVZys2U[/embedyt]

Date: 28th November, 2024

In this thought-provoking webinar hosted by Associate Prof. Antonia Ypsilanti and Prof. Andrea Wigfield, they explore the complex dynamics of loneliness, focusing on the overlooked concept of chronic loneliness and its association to mental health.

While loneliness can serve as an important adaptive function (Ypsilanti & Lazuras, 2022) by motivating people to build or restore social connections, it can also become a persistent, harmful state with serious mental and physical health impacts. In this webinar they discuss chronic loneliness and mental health, and attempt to redefine the term, taking into account their own recent research in this field.

Supporting Information
By Antonia Ypsilanti and Andrea Wigfield

Loneliness, “a distressing feeling that accompanies the perception that one’s social needs are not being met by the quantity or especially the quality of one’s social relationships” has become a major public health issue (WHO, 2023). Loneliness is common but can be associated with severe health outcomes and has a negative impact on social and occupational functioning and life satisfaction (Binte Mohammad Adib & Sabharwal, 2023; Qualter et al., 2015).

Yet, at the same time, it is important to note that loneliness serves an important adaptive function (Ypsilanti & Lazuras, 2022). Loneliness signals to people that something is wrong concerning their social relationships and the sources of support these provide. Precisely because loneliness is such a painful experience, it also motivates people to invest the time and energy that is needed to maintain or repair their social relationships. When people (re-)establish their social relationships, the painful feeling of loneliness will disappear. Indeed, for most people, loneliness is a transient experience without long-lasting negative consequences. For other people, however, loneliness is problematic with a far-reaching impact on their mental and physical health. Hence, it is crucial to identify when and for whom loneliness (mostly) serves its adaptive function and when and for whom loneliness becomes harmful, seriously impacting one’s current and future lives.

There is consensus from recent academic research and policy making reports including our own research that persistent loneliness is an important aspect when discussing how loneliness goes from being beneficial (adaptive) to problematic and harmful (Ypsilanti et al., 2023). This enduring affective experience is sometimes labelled ‘chronic loneliness’. However, although the term is widely used, ‘chronic loneliness’ is not clearly defined, and has been conceptualised and operationalised in the academic and grey literature in very diverse ways.

In addition to the duration of loneliness (which is often determined only by frequency responses in the UCLA scale – that is how often you feel lonely), there may be other characteristics of the loneliness experience that differentiate these harmful states from the adaptive states. These distinguishing features could include the frequency but also intensity of the experience (or combinations of both), the type of causes people mention to explain their experiences of loneliness (specific circumstances or childhood experiences), who people hold responsible for their loneliness (e.g., an external event or themselves), or how likely people think it is that they will not feel lonely in the future anymore (Maes & Vanhalst, 2024).

Click below to download the slides to accompany this webinar.
Chronic Loneliness_Hub_Webinar