Dr David Preece<\/a> from the Curtin enAble Institute and School of Population Health said there is often a misconception about who is most impacted by loneliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s sometimes stereotyped as an issue for older adults, but loneliness affects people of all ages and is in fact most prevalent in young people aged 16 to 25,\u201d Dr Preece said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven before COVID-19, around one in three young Australians were experiencing chronic or severe loneliness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Preece said there were many reasons people may experience loneliness, ranging from a lack of opportunities for meaningful social contact due to limited social networks, difficulties in social skills making it challenging to form close, fulfilling relationships, or a lack of strategies to regulate emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne or a combination of these factors may be behind someone\u2019s loneliness \u2014 as such, it\u2019s important interventions target the causes most relevant to the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The research team will develop a new questionnaire to better assess and identify different types and causes of loneliness in 16 to 25-year olds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They will then assign participants one of several specific treatment modules to target the most relevant mechanisms for the participant\u2019s loneliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPrecision health has been widely and successfully applied to other health issues,\u201d Dr Preece said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis approach recognises that not everyone has a health issue for the same reasons, meaning the most effective treatments must be precisely targeted to the mechanisms most relevant for that individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are now harnessing this precision health approach to target loneliness, bridging clinical science and emotion science. We will create new, targeted, and highly accessible assessment and treatment tools which will be vitally important in combating loneliness moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emerging as a serious public health concern across the world, loneliness is defined as an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4457,"featured_media":23510,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-23508","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public-health"],"acf":{"experts":false,"post_components":false,"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"","qualification":"","link":"","description":"","faculty":""}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":[22646,22257]},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Lonely-1000x500.jpeg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Sam","last_name":"Jeremic","display_name":"Samuel Jeremic"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/23508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/23508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23508"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=23508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}