Cross-Cultural Adaptation to Australia of the KONTAKT© Social Skills Group Training Program for Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Feasibility Study

Interventions to address loneliness and social isolation in young people: A systematic review of the evidence on acceptability and effectiveness

“…None of the intervention descriptions had a complete account of their underlying theoretical framework or likely mechanisms of action related to loneliness and/ or social isolation and most described the intervention components (aim, objective, setting, target group, resources required) relatively sparsely. The included interventions were heterogeneous in their design: 11 were delivered at an individual level (Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Bruehlman-Senecal et al, 2020;Coelho et al, 2017;Gantman et al, 2012;Lim et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2019;Orkibi et al, 2017;Rice et al, 2020;Saulsberry et al, 2013;Stewart et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2018), with two of these having a community element (Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Rice et al, 2020), and one having a structural element (Coelho et al, 2017), and five were delivered solely at community level (Afsharnejad et al, 2020;Maslow et al, 2013;Matthews et al, 2018;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2009). One targeted social isolation (Coelho et al, 2017), whereas the remaining 15 targeted loneliness (Afsharnejad et al, 2020;Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Bruehlman-Senecal et al, 2020;Gantman et al, 2012;Lim et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2019;Maslow et al, 2013;Matthews et al, 2018;Orkibi et al, 2017;Rice et al, 2020;Saulsberry et al, 2013;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2011;Stewart et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2018).…”

“…Seven also utilised qualitative methods as part of a mixed method study design. (Afsharnejad et al, 2020;Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2019;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2011;Stewart et al, 2009) Table 2 provides a summary of the results of the studies. Sixteen publications reported on intervention effectiveness; with the remaining 12 being either process evaluations or formative studies.…”

“…Of these 11 studies, one had a study population not representative of their target population (Orkibi et al, 2017), six did not account for confounders (Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Maslow et al, 2013;Orkibi et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2011;Stewart et al, 2009), and five had incomplete outcome data (Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Rice et al, 2020;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2011;Stewart et al, 2009). Of the seven studies that utilised qualitative methods as part of a mixed methods study (Afsharnejad et al, 2020;Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2019;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2011;Stewart et al, 2009), the qualitative approach was not appropriate to answer the research question in four (Lim et al, 2019;Lim et al, 2020;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2009), the qualitative data collection methods were inadequate to address the research question in one (Stewart et al, 2011), the qualitative findings were not adequately derived from the data in one (Stewart et al, 2009),…”

“…). One targeted social isolation (Coelho et al, 2017), whereas the remaining 15 targeted loneliness (Afsharnejad et al, 2020;Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Bruehlman-Senecal et al, 2020;Gantman et al, 2012;Lim et al, 2019Lim et al, , 2020Maslow et al, 2013;Matthews et al, 2018;Orkibi et al, 2017;Rice et al, 2020;Saulsberry et al, 2013;Smith et al, 2017;Stewart et al, 2009Stewart et al, , 2011Zhang et al, 2018). Apart from one school-based intervention that targeted all young people in the setting (n = 628) (Coelho et al, 2017), all other interventions were delivered to small or modest (n = 20 to 221) numbers of young people.…”

“…Four targeted more general populations of young people, two in schools (Coelho et al, 2017;Orkibi et al, 2017), and two in university (Bruehlman-Senecal et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2018), however two of these interventions pre-screened individuals to determine their need for the intervention (Orkibi et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018). The remaining 12 targeted specific sub-groups of young people hypothesised to be more vulnerable to loneliness because of: homelessness (Stewart et al, 2009), their sexual identity (Smith et al, 2017), mental health problems (Alvarez-Jimenez et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2019Lim et al, , 2020Rice et al, 2020;Saulsberry et al, 2013), chronic health conditions (Maslow et al, 2013), physical disability (Stewart et al, 2011), or an autism spectrum disorder (Afsharnejad et al, 2020;Gantman et al, 2012;Matthews et al, 2018).…”