Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality
Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris and Stephenson return to the question their earlier meta-analysis raised, asking about the overall and relative magnitude of social isolation and loneliness as mortality risks. Searching studies published between January 1980 and February 2014 for quantitative data on mortality as affected by loneliness, social isolation or living alone, and across studies in which several possible confounds were statistically controlled, they report weighted average effects corresponding to a twenty-nine per cent increased likelihood of mortality for social isolation, twenty-six per cent for loneliness and thirty-two per cent for living alone. They found no differences between measures of objective and subjective social isolation. Results were consistent across gender, follow-up length and world region, with initial health status influencing findings and social deficits more predictive of death in samples averaging under sixty-five. This is the paper that complicates the widely quoted claim that isolation matters and loneliness does not.
Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris and Stephenson return to the question their earlier meta-analysis raised, asking about the overall and relative magnitude of social isolation and loneliness as mortality risks. Searching studies published between January 1980 and February 2014 for quantitative data on mortality as affected by loneliness, social isolation or living alone, and across studies in which several possible confounds were statistically controlled, they report weighted average effects corresponding to a twenty-nine per cent increased likelihood of mortality for social isolation, twenty-six per cent for loneliness and thirty-two per cent for living alone. They found no differences between measures of objective and subjective social isolation. Results were consistent across gender, follow-up length and world region, with initial health status influencing findings and social deficits more predictive of death in samples averaging under sixty-five. This is the paper that complicates the widely quoted claim that isolation matters and loneliness does not.
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Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). 'Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review.' Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227-237. Controlling for confounds, weighted average effects were social isolation 29 per cent, loneliness 26 per cent and living alone 32 per cent increased likelihood of mortality; the authors report no differences between measures of objective and subjective social isolation. doi:10.1177/1745691614568352
Where we use it
- Which Is Worse, Being Alone or Feeling Lonely, Why We Belong
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568352
DOI: 10.1177/1745691614568352