Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, Ellen Wilkinson Building, Devas Street, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
School of Public Heath, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, Charing Cross Hospital, Reynolds Building, St Dunstan's Road, London, W6 8RF, United Kingdom.
BMC Public Health. 2024 May 1;24(1):1207. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18370-8.
Even prior to the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was ample evidence that loneliness and social isolation negatively impacted physical and mental health, employability, and are a financial burden on the state. In response, there has been significant policy-level attention on tackling loneliness. The objective of this scoping review was to conduct a loneliness policy landscape analysis across 52 countries of the UN European country groups. Our policy analysis sought to highlight commonalities and differences between the different national approaches to manage loneliness, with the goal to provide actionable recommendations for the consideration of policymakers wishing to develop, expand or review existing loneliness policies.
We searched governmental websites using the Google search engine for publicly available documents related to loneliness and social isolation. Seventy-eight documents were identified in total, from which 23 documents were retained. Exclusion of documents was based on predetermined criteria. A structured content analysis approach was used to capture key information from the policy documents. Contextual data were captured in a configuration matrix to highlight common and unique themes.
We could show that most policies describe loneliness as a phenomenon that was addressed to varying degrees in different domains such as social, health, geographical, economic and political. Limited evidence was found regarding funding for suggested interventions. We synthesised actionable recommendations for the consideration of policy makers focusing on the use of language, prioritisation of interventions, revisiting previous campaigns, sharing best practice across borders, setting out a vision, evaluating interventions, and the need for the rapid and sustainable scalability of interventions.
Our study provides the first overview of the national loneliness policy landscape, highlighting the increasing prioritisation of loneliness and social isolation as a major public health and societal issue. Our findings suggest that policymakers can sustain this momentum and strengthen their strategies by incorporating rigorous, evidence-based intervention evaluations and fostering international collaborations for knowledge sharing. We believe that policymakers can more effectively address loneliness by directing funds to develop and implement interventions that impact the individual, the community and society.
即使在 COVID-19 大流行之前，也有大量证据表明孤独和社会隔离对身心健康、就业能力产生负面影响，并且给国家带来经济负担。因此，各国政府在政策层面上高度关注孤独问题。本研究旨在对联合国欧洲国家组的 52 个国家的孤独政策进行景观分析。我们的政策分析旨在突出不同国家管理孤独的方法之间的异同，目标是为希望制定、扩展或审查现有孤独政策的政策制定者提供可行的建议。
我们使用谷歌搜索引擎在政府网站上搜索与孤独和社会隔离相关的公开文件。总共确定了 78 份文件，其中保留了 23 份。根据预定标准排除文件。采用结构化内容分析方法从政策文件中提取关键信息。将情境数据捕获到配置矩阵中，以突出共同和独特的主题。
我们可以表明，大多数政策将孤独描述为一种在不同领域（如社会、健康、地理、经济和政治）都有不同程度涉及的现象。关于建议干预措施的资金投入，证据有限。我们综合了针对政策制定者的可行建议，重点关注语言的使用、干预措施的优先级、重新审视以前的活动、在边境分享最佳实践、制定愿景、评估干预措施以及快速和可持续扩大干预措施规模的必要性。
我们的研究首次概述了国家孤独政策景观，强调了将孤独和社会隔离作为一个主要的公共卫生和社会问题日益受到重视。我们的研究结果表明，政策制定者可以通过纳入严格的、基于证据的干预措施评估并促进国际知识共享合作来保持这一势头并加强他们的策略。我们相信，通过引导资金用于制定和实施对个人、社区和社会产生影响的干预措施，政策制定者可以更有效地解决孤独问题。
