New perspectives on loneliness: developing theory, methodology and evidence for practice

2013年10月18日，卫生部长杰里米·亨特在全国儿童和成人服务（NCAS）会议上发表了关于老年人的演讲，他强调了“在我们忙碌的生活中，我们作为一个社会完全未能面对的孤独问题”，并提出了各种各样的观点……“英国有多达80万人‘长期孤独’，这是‘国耻’的来源。”“大约500万人说电视是他们的主要陪伴方式”，并得出结论说“生活在我们中间的被遗忘的100万人——被忽视了，这是我们国家的耻辱。”他建议，解决晚年孤独问题的方法是效仿亚洲国家的‘尊重’和明确的代际团结，每个孤独的人都有一个可以探望和陪伴他们的人。”孤独被认为是“衰老的正常部分”，老年人被认为是孤独和孤立的。事实上，老年人自己也希望在晚年经历孤独，并将其视为衰老的正常组成部分。由于关注孤独和老年人，我们忽视了更广泛的生命历程和代际视角，并边缘化了对年轻人的研究；护理人员;有学习障碍的人；LGBT人群和那些在群体环境中的居民。具体的学术学科，如艺术、人文和哲学，在很大程度上仍然是不可见的，研究人员经常在单一学科群体中工作。有必要制定“第二代”研究议程，从经验和理论上为孤独研究带来更复杂的方法，并涵盖更广泛的学科和人群，以便为政策和基于实践的干预措施的制定提供信息。此外，我们在这一研究领域的专家社会研究人员数量有限，因此迫切需要刺激新的研究人员进入这一领域，并鼓励那些刚开始职业生涯的人发展这一研究领域的技能。因此，我们的系列研讨会侧重于从理论、方法和实证的角度研究生命历程中的孤独，这既是原创的，也是学术、实践和政策相关的。我们将专注于生成当代知识的实质性最新概况，确定我们的关键知识差距，检查政策和实践的证据，培养“新”研究人员，并创建一个由经验丰富的和新兴的研究人员组成的网络，将从业者和政策制定者结合起来，发展充满活力的合作和一个机制，以提高这一重要工作领域的形象。我们的6个系列研讨会将确定和讨论围绕一系列群体和地方的孤独体验的关键问题，并重点关注以下问题：-。1. 我们对孤独了解多少？知识缺口是什么？可以帮助我们理解孤独的关键理论框架是什么？艺术和人文的视角如何有助于我们对孤独的理解？不同人群如何理解和定义孤独？5. 在孤独研究中，哪些人群和地区被忽视了？在未来的政策、实践和研究中需要解决的关键问题是什么？为了回答这些问题，我们将汇集国际知名学者、研究人员、政策制定者和实践者。我们与非政府组织建立了合作关系，如“结束孤独运动”和“银线”，并领导了由BIG彩票资助的孤独感干预措施的主要评估。在每次实质性研讨会中，将有时间专门用于培养和支持早期职业研究人员。

In a speech about older people to National Children and Adults Services (NCAS) conference on October 18th 2013 the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt highlighted the "problem of loneliness that in our busy lives we have utterly failed to confront as a society" and stated variously that ..'it is a source of "national shame" that as many as 800,000 people in England are "chronically lonely", ; "Some five million people say television is their main form of company," and concluding that "A forgotten million who live amongst us - ignored to our national shame." His suggestion to solve the problem of loneliness in later life is to emulate the 'respect' and explicit inter-generational solidarity he states is articulated within Asian countries and that every lonely person has someone who could visit them and offer companionship''. Loneliness is perceived as a 'normal part of ageing' and older people perceived as lonely and isolated. Indeed older people themselves expect to experience loneliness in later life and see it as a normal part of ageing. By focus on loneliness and older people we have neglected wider life course and intergenerational perspective and marginalised research with young people; carers; those with learning disabilities; LGBT people and those residents in group settings. Specific academic disciplines such as those of the arts and humanities and philosophy remain largely invisible and researchers often work in single disciplinary groups. There is a need to develop a 'second generation' research agenda bringing a more sophisticated approach to the study of loneliness, empirically and theoretically, and embracing a much broader range of academic disciplines and populations in order to inform the development of policy and practice based interventions. In addition we have limited numbers of social researchers who are expert in this area of research so there is a pressing need to stimulate new researchers to move into this area and encourage those at the start of their careers to develop skills in this area of research. Thus our seminar series focusing upon the theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives on loneliness across the life course is both original and of academic, practice and policy relevance. We will focus on generating substantive state of the art overview of contemporary knowledge, identifying our key knowledge gaps, examining the evidence for policy and practice, developing 'new ' researchers and creating a network of experienced and emerging researchers combining with practitioners and policy makers to develop vibrant collaborations and a mechanism to raise the profile of this important area of work. Our series of 6 seminars will identify and debate the key issues surrounding the experience of loneliness across a range of groups and places and focus upon the following questions:-. 1. What do we know about loneliness and what are the knowledge gaps?2. What are the key theoretical frameworks that can help us understand loneliness?3. How can perspectives from the arts and humanities contribute to our understanding of loneliness?4. How do different populations understand and define loneliness? 5. Which populations and places have been neglected in loneliness research?6. What are the key issues that need to be addressed in future policy, practice and research?To answer these questions we will bring together established international academics, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. We have established collaborations between non-governmental organisations such as the Campaign to End Loneliness and Silverline and are leading the major evaluation of loneliness interventions funded by the BIG Lottery. Embedded with each substantive seminar there will be time devoted to developing and supporting early career researchers.