Loneliness and social isolation in mental health: proposal for a network for cross-disciplinary collaboration and capacity development

当人们感到与他人缺乏有意义的联系时，他们被认为是孤独的。当他们很少与社会接触时，他们被描述为社会孤立。孤独的人更有可能在社会上被孤立，但这两者并不总是同时存在。研究人员发现，这些状态对身心健康有重大影响。其中一些研究是关于孤独的，一些是关于社会孤立的-我们计划将两者放在一起研究，因为很难理清它们的影响。最有力的证据是孤独对身体健康的影响。例如，持续孤独的人往往死得更早，患心脏病的几率更高。关于心理健康中的孤独和社会孤立的研究较少，但很明显有很多联系。例如，孤独和/或社交孤立的人更容易抑郁，而孤独/缺乏社会支持的抑郁症患者比其他人恢复得更差。因此，通过帮助人们减少孤独感，可以防止一些人出现心理健康问题。在已经有心理健康问题的人中，旨在减少孤独和/或社会孤立的策略可能有助于康复。一些这样的战略已经制定，例如由慈善机构制定。然而，我们还没有很好的证据来证明这些策略在减少孤独和社会孤立方面有多好，以及哪些策略最适合哪些人。我们也不太了解他们在多大程度上防止人们发展心理健康问题，或者改善已经有心理健康问题的人的生活。试图改善这一证据的挑战是对孤独和社会孤立的许多不同影响。例如，人们的基因组成，他们倾向于思考其他人的方式，他们的照顾责任，他们的残疾，他们居住的地区的建筑和布局，以及他们的收入和教育只是影响人们是否变得孤独或孤立的一些因素。可能的帮助方式也多种多样。谈话疗法似乎可以帮助一些孤独的人。其他帮助的方式包括支持人们重建以前的关系，或参与艺术，体育或宗教活动。数字连接方式可能会帮助一些人。另一种方法是试图使整个社区，甚至是一个国家，更友好，更少分裂。没有人是孤独和社会孤立相关领域的专家，也没有人是孤独和社会孤立与心理健康相关领域的专家，这就是为什么这次电话会议是一个很好的机会，让我们聚集在一起，建立一个包括许多不同类型的相关专家的网络。我们将举办一系列活动，让人们汇集他们的专业知识，以绘制出我们之间已经知道的关于这个领域的东西。我们还将让一群有心理健康问题亲身经历的人参与我们的活动。他们将与研究人员以及活跃在这一领域的慈善机构和公共组织合作，制定出进一步研究的优先事项，将不同类型的专业知识结合在一起。一旦我们绘制了证据并确定了研究重点，我们将向我们网络内外的研究人员宣传开展小型项目的机会，这些项目将有助于推动这一领域的发展。在这个领域有一些优秀的年轻研究人员加入了我们的网络-我们的目标是特别支持他们和其他潜在的未来领导者申请资金。最后阶段将广泛介绍网络的工作。这将包括其他研究人员的论文和会议，与政策制定者的会议，以及与专业人士和公众讨论我们的发现和潜在的下一步行动。我们的博客合作者精神精灵和马克布朗，以及我们在政策研究中的角色将在这个阶段帮助我们。

People are said to be lonely when they feel unpleasantly lacking in meaningful connections with other people. They are described as socially isolated when they have little social contact. Lonely people are more likely to be socially isolated, but the two do not always go together. Researchers have found that these states have significant impacts on physical and mental health. Some of this research is about loneliness and some about social isolation - we plan to look at both alongside each other, as it can be difficult to disentangle their effects. The strongest evidence is on the impact of loneliness on physical health. For example, people who are persistently lonely tend to die earlier and have more heart disease. There is less research on loneliness and social isolation in mental health, but it's clear there are many links. For example, people who are lonely and/or socially isolated are more likely to become depressed, and depressed people who are lonely/lacking in social support recover less well than others. So by helping people to feel less lonely, some people could be prevented from developing mental health problems. Among people who already have mental health problems, strategies aimed at reducing loneliness and/or social isolation may help recovery. Some such strategies have been developed, for instance by charities. However, we don't yet have good evidence about how good these strategies are at reducing loneliness and social isolation, and about which are best for which people. We also don't know much about the extent to which they prevent people from developing mental health problems, or improve life for people who already have them. Challenges in trying to improve this evidence are the many different influences on loneliness and social isolation. For instance, people's genetic make-up, the way they tend to think about other people, their caring responsibilities, their disabilities, the architecture and layout of the area they live in, and their income and education are just some of things that influence whether people become lonely or isolated. Possible ways of helping are also very varied. Talking treatments seem to help some lonely people. Other ways of helping include supporting people in rebuilding former relationships, or in getting involved in the arts, sport or religious practice. Digital ways of connecting may help some people. Another approach is to try to make a whole community, or even a country, friendlier and less divided. No one is an expert in all fields relevant to loneliness and social isolation and their relationship to mental health, and that's why this call is a great opportunity for us to get together a network that includes many different kinds of relevant expert. We will hold a series of events where people bring together their expertise to map out what we already know between us about this field. We will also involve throughout our activities a group of people with personal experience of mental health problems. They will work with researchers, and with charities and public organisations who are active in this field, to work out the priorities for further research that brings together different types of expertise. Once we've mapped the evidence and established research priorities, we will advertise to researchers within and outside our network an opportunity to carry out small projects that will help move this field forwards. There are some excellent young researchers in this field who have joined our network - we aim especially to support them and other potential future leaders in applying for funding. The final stage will involve presenting the network's work widely. This will include papers and a conference for other researchers, meetings with policy makers, and discussions with professionals and the public about our findings and potential next steps. Our blogger collaborators the Mental Elf and Mark Brown, and our roles in policy research will help us at this stage.