Credit score: Unsplash/CC0 Public Area
Loneliness is extra prone to trigger despair if one retains ruminating on how lonely they’re. That is the essence of a research by The College of Hong Kong (HKU) that has therapeutic implications for treating remoted people or populations.
Previous research have recognized a loneliness-rumination-depression nexus. Rumination is outlined as repetitive and intrusive damaging ideas and emotions, and loneliness as a spot between desired and precise social connections.
Given a extensively reported excessive co-occurrence between loneliness and despair, a analysis group led by the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Mind and Cognitive Sciences, Professor Tatia M.C. Lee, Chair Professor of Psychological Science and Scientific Psychology and Could Professor in Neuropsychology at HKU, sought to grasp the underlying mechanisms.
The analysis group’s speculation for his or her research, entitled “A network analysis of rumination on loneliness and the relationship with depression,” which was not too long ago revealed in Nature Psychological Well being, aimed to look at the connections that rumination would mediate the connection between loneliness and despair, the place the next degree of loneliness can be related to extra rumination, which might, in flip, hyperlink to the next severity of depressive signs.
Mediation mannequin between loneliness, rumination and despair as unitary constructs. Credit score: Nature Psychological Well being (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44220-024-00350-x
“Our study examined the relationship between loneliness, rumination, and depressive symptoms using the network analysis methodology. The findings revealed that ruminating on the feeling of loneliness poses a significant risk of developing depression. Consequently, focusing interventions for loneliness could potentially be a pivotal strategy for curbing the escalating incidence of depression,” Professor Lee says.
The analysis group studied 900 adults in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Fuzhou, China, between 2021 and 2023 in the course of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Strict COVID-19 lockdowns in Hong Kong and China offered the cohort of people to review.
The group used a community evaluation method to assemble the Loneliness-Despair and Loneliness-Rumination-Despair community utilizing a cross-sectional design within the grownup pattern. Community evaluation focuses on how particular person gadgets join inside and throughout the bigger variable and the way these connections affect the habits of the community to elucidate bigger phenomena.
The findings indicated that ruminating on the sensation of loneliness was the important thing underlying issue that modulated the loneliness-depression relationship. Particularly, a connection between a selected ruminative thought (“think about how alone you are”) and a specific merchandise of loneliness (“how often do you feel alone”) is certainly important in sustaining the loneliness-rumination-depression community.
Based mostly on the findings, the analysis group suggests interventions for despair ought to concentrate on ameliorating ruminative ideas, particularly the sensation of loneliness. Therapies ought to goal to disrupt the hyperlink between often feeling lonely and ruminating on loneliness, which then would deactivate the community of loneliness, rumination, and despair, thereby minimizing the hostile results of loneliness on inflicting despair.
Extra info:
Jingyi Luo et al, A community evaluation of rumination on loneliness and the connection with despair, Nature Psychological Well being (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44220-024-00350-x
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The College of Hong Kong
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Ruminating about being lonely is extra carefully linked to despair than precise loneliness, research suggests (2025, January 15)
retrieved 15 January 2025
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