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Loneliness and mental health at the early stages of the Covid‐19 pandemic in England.
- Source :
- Health & Social Care in the Community; Sep2022, Vol. 30 Issue 5, pe2374-e2384, 11p, 5 Charts, 1 Graph
- Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- The current researchers carried out a large online survey on 18 March 2020 and unintentionally provided a 'snap shot' of how the British population was responding in the early stages of the Covid‐19 pandemic. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between loneliness and mental health at the early stages of the global crisis. This cross‐sectional study was carried out using Prolific, an online participant recruitment platform that allowed 1608 responses in just 2 hr. Participants completed measures of Personal Well‐being, Psychological Distress, Flourishing and Loneliness. Numerous associations between loneliness and mental health were found. A multiple regression found that 43% of the variance in loneliness can be accounted for by age, psychological distress and flourishing. Responses were also categorised into three groups: the non‐lonely (n = 311), averagely lonely (n = 1054) and the severely lonely (n = 243), with analysis indicating that poorer well‐being was associated with increased loneliness. Due to the cross sectional nature of this research, determining the direction of causality is not possible. It remains uncertain whether increased loneliness negatively impacted on mental health, whether poor mental health lead to increased loneliness, or both in fact. Current findings suggest that severely lonely individuals may be particularly vulnerable to psychological distress and that individuals with poor mental health may be especially prone to loneliness. Individuals experiencing loneliness and/or poor mental health will almost certainly need additional support during and beyond the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- WELL-being
STATISTICS
HAPPINESS
CROSS-sectional method
AGE distribution
ONE-way analysis of variance
MULTIPLE regression analysis
MENTAL health
QUANTITATIVE research
MANN Whitney U Test
SATISFACTION
SURVEYS
PEARSON correlation (Statistics)
LONELINESS
DESCRIPTIVE statistics
RESEARCH funding
INTERPERSONAL relations
DATA analysis software
DEMOGRAPHY
ANXIETY
EMOTIONS
COVID-19 pandemic
PSYCHOLOGICAL distress
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 09660410
- Volume :
- 30
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Health & Social Care in the Community
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 158480088
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13676