Understanding Loneliness

Take our Loneliness Test

Find a therapist near me

What people need from connection differs by person and place, so one program won't fit everywhere.

Most tools that measure social connection were built in the US; only 4.7% center on adults over 65.

Two tools under the same heading share on average only 9% to 20% of their content.

Monitoring should show which form of connection is missing, and for whom, so the right department can act.

In 2022, two large European surveys asked people the same loneliness question, in nationally representative samples from all 27 EU member states. They still produced very different prevalence rates and ranked the countries differently.

Governments now spend real money on loneliness, and they need tools that show whether a program changed what it set out to change. A loneliness figure can show the size of a problem but not what is missing in people's lives. One person lacks someone to rely on in a crisis. Another sees friends every week and still feels nobody understands them. Transport, housing, social services, and culture budgets each act on a different part of that picture.

Our latest policy brief for LONELY-EU, a Horizon Europe project, asks where the tools behind these numbers came from and what they actually ask.

What We Already Knew About Loneliness

With colleagues at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, we tested common loneliness measures in 25,646 people across all 27 member states. Only the Three-Item UCLA Loneliness Scale produced scores that could be compared from one country to the next, and its scores track emotional states more closely than social........

© Psychology Today