Professor Christina Victor, Professor Norma Daykin, Professor Catherine Meads, Professor Alan Tomlinson, Karen Gray, Jack Lane and Professor Louise Mansfield,
One of the key challenges to wellbeing is loneliness. Loneliness has been largely seen as a problem of old age. However, the contemporary policy interest in the broad topic area of wellbeing has generated renewed interest in loneliness as a factor that compromises wellbeing across the adult life course rather than being confined to old age/older adults. As with the concept of wellbeing, loneliness is a debated and contested concept. There are several underlying assumptions about loneliness. We presume a universal understanding of what loneliness is, that it is a homogeneous, static and/or linear experience, that it is quantitatively accessible and therefore measurable. We further presume that there is ‘something’ that we can and should do to prevent or cure it. However, there is a debate as to what loneliness is. This paper presents the findings of a conceptual review of loneliness. It reports on published literature produced post 1945 and unpublished (grey) literature which has employed qualitative methods to examine and understand key domains of loneliness cross the adult lifecourse. The implications for the findings for policy and practice in the area of loneliness are discussed.
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