Loneliness as a public health issue in context: capturing experiences and social determinants of loneliness in diverse young adults in London & Tokyo

孤独作为背景下的公共卫生问题：捕捉伦敦不同年轻人孤独的经历和社会决定因素

• 批准号: 2887238
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: King's College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2887238
• 关键词: Loneliness; public; health; issue; context

The last decade of research points to a global trend of increasing numbers of adults feeling lonely -though rates of increase differ greatly between countries and regions. Contrary to the narrative thatloneliness is a problem mainly faced by the elderly, national and local government statisticssuggest rates of loneliness are equal or even higher in young adulthood. As people reportingloneliness are more likely to experience later mental and physical health problems, addiction, self-injury and reduced quality of life, rising rates are an alarming development for academics andpublic health officials alike. Yet there remain gaps in our knowledge around what socialcircumstances increase risk for and maintain loneliness, and research is limited by current tools forquantitative measurement.This project brings together two ongoing studies of young people's mental health in London andTokyo to 1) qualitatively investigate experiences and social determinants of loneliness in diversegroups of young people, and 2) develop a new, cross-culturally valid questionnaire for measuringyoung adult loneliness in the general population. Given the attention that loneliness is receiving inboth countries - epitomized by their recent appointments of "Ministers for Loneliness" - conductingthis work in both the UK and Japan presents a unique opportunity to inform domestic public healthpolicy and global efforts to tackle social isolation.

过去十年的研究表明，全球范围内感到孤独的成年人数量不断增加，尽管各个国家和地区的增长率差异很大。与孤独主要是老年人面临的问题的说法相反，国家和地方政府的统计数据显示，年轻人的孤独率持平甚至更高。由于报告孤独感的人更有可能在以后经历精神和身体健康问题、成瘾、自残和生活质量下降，因此孤独症发病率的上升对于学者和公共卫生官员来说都是一个令人震惊的发展。然而，我们对哪些社会环境会增加孤独感风险并维持孤独感的知识仍然存在差距，而且研究受到当前定量测量工具的限制。该项目汇集了伦敦和东京正在进行的两项关于年轻人心理健康的研究，目的是：1）定性调查不同年轻人群体的孤独感的经历和社会决定因素；2）开发一种新的、跨文化有效的调查问卷，用于测量年轻人的孤独感 在一般人群中。鉴于孤独问题在两国都受到了关注——最近任命的“孤独大臣”就是一个缩影——在英国和日本开展这项工作提供了一个独特的机会，可以为国内公共卫生政策和解决社会孤立问题的全球努力提供信息。