The aim of this study was to examine whether young adults in nonmarital romantic relationships experience better mental health and lower levels of mental health problems compared to single young adults. In addition, the current study also tested the hypothesis that perceived social support mediates the association between relationship status (single vs. partnered) and mental health, and mental ...

BACKGROUND This study evaluates the outcomes of an Internet-at-home intervention experiment that intended to decrease loneliness among chronically ill and physically handicapped older adults through introducing them to the use of an electronic communication facility. METHOD To determine the effectiveness of the experiment in terms of reducing loneliness, 15 older adults were interviewed three...

Human connections are key to the promotion of health and prevention of illness; moreover, illness can cause deterioration of human connections. Healthcare professional-patient relationships are key to ensuring the preservation of adequate human connections. It is important for healthcare professionals to develop their ability to foster satisfactory human connections because: (i) they represent ...

Depression is the most common mental and emotional disorder that emerges in the late stages of life. It is closely associated with poor health, disability, mortality, and suicide. The study examines the risk factors of depression in late life, especially the psychosocial factors, among a sample comprising 162 community-dwelling Singaporean adults aged 65 years and above. An interview-based stru...

OBJECTIVES To examine the psychometric properties of the Social Support Questionnaire Duke-UNC (DUFSS) and the De Jong-Gierveld Loneliness Scale in a sample of non-institutionalized older adults. METHODS The sample consisted of 1,106 non-institutionalized older adults included in a national survey on quality of life. Both scales were analyzed according to classical test theory (acceptability,...

Two studies were conducted to examine mental representations of loneliness and social connectedness. In Study 1, young adults (N = 2,531) completed the revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (R-UCLA scale) and demographic questionnaires. An exploratory factor analysis of the R-UCLA scale on half the sample revealed a three-dimensional conceptual structure that generalized across gender. This mental repr...

This study investigated the possible differences between single individuals and individuals in nonmarital romantic relationships in the domains of emotional (romantic and family) and social loneliness, and of perceived social support from family, friends and significant others. Based on a Polish university-student sample of 315 participants (167 women and 148 men) aged 19 to 25 years (M = 21.90...