ArticlePsychosomatic medicine
Loneliness, Living Alone, and All-Cause Mortality: The Role of Emotional and Social Loneliness in the Elderly During 19 Years of Follow-Up.
Article in Psychosomatic medicine. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 90 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
90 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 206 citations in OpenAlex.
- Digital Health Intervention Effect on Older Adults With Chronic Diseases Living Alone: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Loneliness, social isolation, and living alone: a comprehensive systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression of mortality risks in older adults.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2025Pooled it
- Reducing Loneliness and Social Isolation of Older Adults Through Voice Assistants: Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality.Nature human behaviour · 2023Pooled it
- Prevalence of Frailty Among Chinese Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of public health · 2023Pooled it
- A randomized controlled trial to address a multimodal intervention in the elderly: the effects of the CAMINN study.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2026Trial
- Trial
- Factors Predicting Loneliness in Older Adults Attending Delaware Senior Center Programs.Delaware journal of public health · 2026Article
- Loneliness, affectivity and psychological distress in people living alone during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cluster analysis.Psicologia, reflexao e critica : revista semestral do Departamento de Psicologia da UFRGS · 2026Article
- The Role of Family Interaction Frequency on Depressive Symptoms in Korean Older Adults Aged ≥80 and Living Alone.Journal of preventive medicine and public health = Yebang Uihakhoe chi · 2026Article
- Social isolation and loneliness and mortality among cancer survivors: a prospective cohort study.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Article
- The risk perception of disease aggravation in older patients with non-communicable diseases: a qualitative descriptive study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Loneliness is related to facial emotion perception in people with HIV.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Living arrangements and lonely life expectancy: a multistate life table based on Markov chains.Population health metrics · 2025Article
- The Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam: design and cohort update 2025.European journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Loneliness Links Adverse Childhood Experiences to Mortality Risk Across 26 Years.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2025Article
- Uncovering the impact of loneliness in ageing populations: a comprehensive scoping review.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Life-Space Mobility Is Related to Loneliness Among Living-Alone Older Adults: Longitudinal Analysis With Motion Sensor Data.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025Article
- A network analysis of depression and anxiety symptoms among Chinese elderly living alone: based on the 2017-2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS).BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Loneliness and social participation among older Japanese adults: The influence of gender on social participation.PloS one · 2025Article
30 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThe aims of the study were 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.
methodsParticipants 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.
resultsAlthough social loneliness was not associated with mortality in those living alone, emotional loneliness was; with each 1 SD increase in emotional loneliness, there was an 18.6% increased risk of all-cause mortality in the fully adjusted model (HR = 1.186, p = .029). 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% (hazard ratiointeraction = 1.179, p = .005) in those living alone. No interaction between personality traits with loneliness emerged.
conclusionsEmotional loneliness is associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality in older adults who live alone. Functional status was identified as one potential pathway accounting for the adverse consequences of loneliness. Emotional loneliness that can arise out of the loss or absence of a close emotional attachment figure seems to be the toxic component of loneliness.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.