ArticleSSM - population health2023
Are loneliness and social isolation equal threats to health and well-being? An outcome-wide longitudinal approach.
Article in SSM - population health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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
43 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled 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
- Factors associated with loneliness and social capital in a large volunteer sample of adults in England.BMC global and public health · 2026Article
- Incremental Information from Repeated Loneliness Assessments in Middle-Aged and Older Adults.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The dynamic interplay between loneliness and health behaviors from adolescence to midlife: A Norwegian population-based cohort study.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- A Prospective Study of the Association Between School Connectedness in Adolescence and Social Connection in Adulthood.The Journal of school health · 2026Article
- Investigating relationships between loneliness, social isolation and health.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Are adverse childhood experiences associated with trajectories of social isolation in adulthood? Evidence from two United States National surveys.The Gerontologist · 2026Article
- The associations of code reform zoning and activity-oriented zoning with neighborhood social connectedness in the U.S., including mediation by walkability and park coverage.Health & place · 2026Article
- Social isolation in mid-life: associations with psychological distress, life satisfaction and self-rated health in two successive British birth cohorts.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Personality Traits and Social Isolation in Older Adults.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Loneliness, social isolation, and social support in older adults with cardiovascular diseases: a cross-sectional study in a university-affiliated tertiary hospital in western Iran.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2026Article
- Differences in Assessing Loneliness Among Japanese Older Adults: A Comparison of Family Physicians and Nurses.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Culture matters? Family norms, living arrangements, and loneliness in China.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- Mental health in recreational and professional dancers: a genetically informed study in Sweden.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- Loneliness, social isolation, and health-related quality of life in older adults.European journal of ageing · 2026Article
- Disentangling social isolation, loneliness, and later-life cognitive function for older adults in the United States: evidence from causal inference modeling.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Making new connections: an fNIRS machine learning classification study of inter-brain synchrony in the default mode network.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Lithuanian children's trauma characteristics and correlates: comparison of clinical and non-clinical samples.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Community music activity participation and loneliness among Chinese young adults living alone.Frontiers in public health · 2026Observational
- Exploring the links between social connection and physical functioning among older Adults: A network analysis.PloS one · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The detrimental effects of loneliness and social isolation on health and well-being outcomes are well documented. In response, governments, corporations, and community-based organizations have begun leveraging tools to create interventions and policies aimed at reducing loneliness and social isolation at scale. However, these efforts are frequently hampered by a key knowledge gap: when attempting to improve specific health and well-being outcomes, decision-makers are often unsure whether to target loneliness, social isolation, or both. Filling this knowledge gap will inform the development and refinement of effective interventions. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (13,752 participants (59% women and 41% men, mean [SD] age = 67 [10] years)), we examined how changes in loneliness and social isolation over a 4-year follow-up period (from t0:2008/2010 to t1:2012/2014) were associated with 32 indicators of physical-, behavioral-, and psychosocial-health outcomes 4-years later (t2:2016/2018). We used multiple logistic-, linear-, and generalized-linear regression models, and adjusted for sociodemographic, personality traits, pre-baseline levels of both exposures (loneliness and social isolation), and all outcomes (t0:2008/2010). We incorporated data from all participants into the overall estimate, regardless of whether their levels of loneliness and social isolation changed from the pre-baseline to baseline waves. After adjusting for a wide range of covariates, we observed that both loneliness and social isolation were associated with several physical health outcomes and health behaviors. However, social isolation was more predictive of mortality risk and loneliness was a stronger predictor of psychological outcomes. Loneliness and social isolation have independent effects on various health and well-being outcomes and thus constitute distinct targets for interventions aimed at improving population health and well-being.
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