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Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It
Background: loneliness is a common experience for adolescents, yet the voices of adolescents are missing from current conceptualisations of loneliness. That means, measures that have been created based on current conceptualisations may miss important contexts of adolescence, such as the roles of fri...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8621930/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34831664 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182211904 |
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author | Verity, Lily Schellekens, Tine Adam, Tine Sillis, Floor Majorano, Marinella Wigelsworth, Michael Qualter, Pamela Peters, Beth Stajniak, Stephanie Maes, Marlies |
author_facet | Verity, Lily Schellekens, Tine Adam, Tine Sillis, Floor Majorano, Marinella Wigelsworth, Michael Qualter, Pamela Peters, Beth Stajniak, Stephanie Maes, Marlies |
author_sort | Verity, Lily |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background: loneliness is a common experience for adolescents, yet the voices of adolescents are missing from current conceptualisations of loneliness. That means, measures that have been created based on current conceptualisations may miss important contexts of adolescence, such as the roles of friendships, that determine the way loneliness is experienced. The current study aims to centre adolescent voices to identify how they conceptualise loneliness and what strategies they consider to be useful for adolescents to cope with loneliness. Method: thematic framework analysis (TFA) was conducted on qualitative interviews with young people aged 8–14 years in Belgium and Italy to identify salient themes in their conceptualisations of loneliness. Results: Loneliness was conceptualised as a negative emotional state involving negative thinking patterns that occurs when an individual perceives they are missing out on a desired aspect in their social relationships. Coping strategies related to alleviating negative affect, and aiding social reconnection. Conclusions: friendships with peers were understood to be central to adolescent loneliness experiences. In line with that, loneliness was seen to be experienced at school. Age-related differences in friendship expectations were identified, highlighting how developmental needs relate to the loneliness experience. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8621930 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86219302021-11-27 Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It Verity, Lily Schellekens, Tine Adam, Tine Sillis, Floor Majorano, Marinella Wigelsworth, Michael Qualter, Pamela Peters, Beth Stajniak, Stephanie Maes, Marlies Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Background: loneliness is a common experience for adolescents, yet the voices of adolescents are missing from current conceptualisations of loneliness. That means, measures that have been created based on current conceptualisations may miss important contexts of adolescence, such as the roles of friendships, that determine the way loneliness is experienced. The current study aims to centre adolescent voices to identify how they conceptualise loneliness and what strategies they consider to be useful for adolescents to cope with loneliness. Method: thematic framework analysis (TFA) was conducted on qualitative interviews with young people aged 8–14 years in Belgium and Italy to identify salient themes in their conceptualisations of loneliness. Results: Loneliness was conceptualised as a negative emotional state involving negative thinking patterns that occurs when an individual perceives they are missing out on a desired aspect in their social relationships. Coping strategies related to alleviating negative affect, and aiding social reconnection. Conclusions: friendships with peers were understood to be central to adolescent loneliness experiences. In line with that, loneliness was seen to be experienced at school. Age-related differences in friendship expectations were identified, highlighting how developmental needs relate to the loneliness experience. MDPI 2021-11-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8621930/ /pubmed/34831664 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182211904 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Verity, Lily Schellekens, Tine Adam, Tine Sillis, Floor Majorano, Marinella Wigelsworth, Michael Qualter, Pamela Peters, Beth Stajniak, Stephanie Maes, Marlies Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It |
title | Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It |
title_full | Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It |
title_fullStr | Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It |
title_full_unstemmed | Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It |
title_short | Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It |
title_sort | tell me about loneliness: interviews with young people about what loneliness is and how to cope with it |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8621930/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34831664 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182211904 |
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