ArticleJournal of affective disorders2021
Examining temporal interactions between loneliness and depressive symptoms and the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties among UK residents during the COVID-19 lockdown: Longitudinal results from the COVID-19 psychological wellbeing study.
Article in Journal of affective disorders, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Association of Social Support and Loneliness with Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Loneliness and the onset of new mental health problems in the general population.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- The global evolution of mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Pooled it
- Mental Health Consequences of COVID-19 Pandemic Period in the European Population: An Institutional Challenge.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- The effects of the Unified Protocol and Unified Protocol skills on loneliness in the COVID-19 pandemic.Depression and anxiety · 2022Trial
- Longitudinal Interrelations Among Loneliness, Depressive Symptoms, and Social Behaviors in Youth: A Cross-Lagged Panel Study in a Post-Disaster Context.Child psychiatry and human development · 2026Article
- From loneliness to depression: A longitudinal diagnostic study among Norwegian university students.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- The bidirectional relationship between emotional distress and subjective wellbeing among college students: a cross-lagged network analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Trait Emotion Regulation as a Predictor of Mental Health and Substance Use During a Period of Chronic Stress: A Longitudinal Analysis of US Veterans.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2025Observational
- Evaluating the effects of a conditioning training paradigm on loneliness, socio-affective processing, and brain connectivity: a study protocol of a two-arm randomised controlled trial.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Loneliness and Mental Health Disorders in Older Adults Living in Portugal During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Virtual avatar communication task eliciting pseudo-social isolation and detecting social isolation using non-verbal signal monitoring in older adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- How loneliness impacts depression among Chinese college students throughout COVID-19: mediators of death anxiety and negative affect.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Mapping cognitive diversity in older adults through community-based digital screening via mobile devices: a cross-sectional latent class analysis.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Loneliness, emotional support and the mental health of young adults and their parents in New York, US during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cohort study.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Pandemic Loneliness in Healthcare Workers. Does It Predict Later Psychological Distress?Psychological reports · 2024Article
- How Mental Health and Suicidality Changed during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study in the General and Psychiatric Population Illustrating Risk and Protective Factors.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- "Meaning in Life" Mediates the Relationship between Loneliness and Depressive Symptoms among Older Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- "It's a feeling of complete disconnection": experiences of existential loneliness from youth to older adulthood.BMC psychology · 2023Article
- Social determinants of mental health during a year of the COVID-19 pandemic.Development and psychopathology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLongitudinal studies examining the temporal association between mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 outbreak are needed. It is important to determine how relationships between key outcomes, specifically loneliness and depressive symptoms, manifest over a brief timeframe and in a pandemic context.
methodData was gathered over 4 months (March - June 2020) using an online survey with three repeated measures at monthly intervals (N = 1958; 69.8% females; Age 18-87 years, M = 37.01, SD = 12.81). Associations between loneliness, depression symptoms, and emotion regulation difficulty were tested using Pearson's product moment correlations, and descriptive statistics were calculated for all study variables. Cross-lagged structural equation modelling was used to examine the temporal relationships between variables.
resultsThe longitudinal association between loneliness and depressive symptoms was reciprocal. Loneliness predicted higher depressive symptoms one month later, and depressive symptoms predicted higher loneliness one month later. The relationship was not mediated by emotion regulation difficulties. Emotion regulation difficulties and depressive symptoms were also reciprocally related over time. LIMITATIONS: Limitations include the reliance on self-report data and the non-representative sample. There was no pre-pandemic assessment limiting the conclusions that can be drawn regarding the mental health impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
conclusionsLoneliness should be considered an important feature of case conceptualisation for depression during this time. Clinical efforts to improve mental health during the pandemic could focus on interventions that target either loneliness, depression, or both. Potential approaches include increasing physical activity or low-intensity cognitive therapies delivered remotely.
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