Peter Byrne, associate registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: "Our stereotype of the older person, home alone … is challenged by information [showing] the number of children calling a helpline who are lonely has increased by 60% in five years".
The researchers also analysed more than 600m messages on Twitter and found that the use of depressive words, such as alone, bleak, lonely and trapped, increased as temperatures rose.
"Lonely Planet has increased its presence in digital, magazine publishing and emerging markets whilst also growing its global market share, despite difficult economic conditions," said Paul Dempsey, interim chief executive of BBC Worldwide, in a statement.
Reduced social support (lower DUSOCS scores) was associated with a poorer attitude towards ageing and more lonely dissatisfaction, but increased anxiety only at very low levels of support.
Neither being depressed or lonely were linked to increased risk of harmful drinking, although being single, separated or divorced was, although only for men.
For example, they provoked people into feeling lonely and observed how it increased their tendency to feel nostalgic.
The following hypotheses will be examined: (1) That lonely adolescents are at an increased risk of engaging in health risk behaviours; (2) That the relationship between adolescent loneliness and health risk behaviour can vary by the type of health risk behaviour.
But anything more than that will only lead to increased stress levels, heartache, and lonely Saturday nights.
Finally, more attention should be given to vulnerable elderly people who are at increased risk of becoming isolated and lonely.
Within Healthy Ageing, the local infrastructure was taken into account, but target group differentiation probably needs further attention to distinguish lonely elderly people, elderly people with an (identifiable) increased risk of loneliness, social network members of elderly people and professionals.
