Loneliness is an increasingly significant social and public health issue in contemporary societies. The available evidence suggests that social support is one of the key psychosocial processes for the reduction and prevention of loneliness. The study population comprised people aged 65 years and over living in Spain, with a partner without cohabiting children , alone or in a nursing home.
A mixed-methods approach was used, combining data from a survey involving participants quantitative phase and data from semi-structured interviews with 30 older adults qualitative phase.
The relationship between the various sources and loneliness was analysed using structural equation modelling SEM for the survey data and thematic analysis for the qualitative information. The results from both phases of the study suggest different association dynamics between sources of social support and the social and emotional dimensions of loneliness. Lower levels of emotional loneliness were related to support from the following sources: spouse, children, grandchildren, siblings and friends.
Lower levels of social loneliness were related to support from the following sources: spouse, grandchildren, siblings and friends. In contrast, greater levels of emotional loneliness were related to support from neighbours and greater levels of social loneliness were related to support from children. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of the association between social support and loneliness and suggest that interventions aimed at reducing loneliness could be more effectively targeted by considering the specific effects of support derived from different sources.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The funder did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
