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Loneliness, Living Alone, and All-Cause Mortality: The Role of Emotional and Social Loneliness in the Elderly During 19 Years of Follow-Up

O'Súilleabháin, PS; Gallagher, S; Steptoe, A; (2019) Loneliness, Living Alone, and All-Cause Mortality: The Role of Emotional and Social Loneliness in the Elderly During 19 Years of Follow-Up. Psychosomatic Medicine , 81 (6) pp. 521-526. 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000710. Green open access

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Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To examine the predictive value of social and emotional loneliness for all-cause mortality in the oldest-old who do, and do not live alone and to test whether these varied by functional status and personality. METHODS: Participants were 413 older adults from the Berlin Aging Study (M ± SD = 84.53 ± 8.61 years of age) who either lived alone (n = 253) or did not live alone (n = 160). Significance values for hazard ratios are reported having adjusted for age, sex, education, income, marital status, depressive illness, and both social and emotional loneliness. RESULTS: While social loneliness was not associated with mortality in those living alone, emotional loneliness was; with each 1 SD increase in emotional loneliness there was a 18.6% increased risk of all-cause mortality in the fully adjusted model (HR = 1.186; p = 0.029). No effects emerged for social or emotional loneliness for those not living alone. No associations emerged for social or emotional loneliness among those not living alone. Examinations of potential moderators revealed that with each 1 SD increase in functional status, the risk associated with emotional loneliness for all-cause mortality increased by 17.9% (HRinteraction = 1.179; p = 0.005) in those living alone. No interaction between personality traits with loneliness emerged. CONCLUSIONS: Emotional loneliness is associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality in older aged adults who live alone. Functional status was identified as one potential pathway of accounting for the adverse consequences of loneliness. Emotional loneliness that can arise out of the loss or absence of a close emotional attachment figure appears to be the toxic component of loneliness.

Type: Article
Title: Loneliness, Living Alone, and All-Cause Mortality: The Role of Emotional and Social Loneliness in the Elderly During 19 Years of Follow-Up
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000710
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000710
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the American Psychosomatic Society. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.
Keywords: emotional loneliness, functional status, living alone, loneliness, mortality, social loneliness
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Behavioural Science and Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10074683
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