Loneliness and related factors among people with schizophrenia in Japan: a cross‐sectional study

Abstract

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Accessible summaryWhat is known about the subject?• Loneliness among people diagnosed with schizophrenia is a serious problem.Recent studies have focused on the loneliness; however, no study has examined the relationships between loneliness and both individual and environmental factors comprehensively.What this paper adds to existing knowledge?• The main results indicated that the community-dwelling people diagnosed with schizophrenia in Japan as well as in other countries experienced higher levels of loneliness. Both individual and environmental factors were related to loneliness. Increasing the self-efficacy for community life and self-esteem of individual factors, and not being socially isolated and increasing community integration of environmental factors would improve their loneliness.What are the implications for practice?• Health practitioners, in particular, public health nurses in mental health care, should work to develop a partnership with people diagnosed with schizophrenia, their family members, friends and other community-dwelling people in order to decrease and prevent loneliness. For individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, interventions by cooperating with community resources and using the technique of nurses to assist them with continuous community activity could be useful. For environmental interventions, population approach such as developing daily programmes which family members can participate in, and cooperating with educational institutions and community events could have a positive effects. AbstractIntroduction: Loneliness among people diagnosed with schizophrenia living in communities can decrease quality of life and may contribute to suicide. Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the levels of loneliness among Japanese people diagnosed with schizophrenia and to identify individual and environmental factors related to their loneliness. Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 264 people diagnosed with schizophrenia who use local activity support centres in urban areas. The self-administered questionnaires included questions on loneliness, demographic characteristics, individual factors including self-efficacy for community life and self-esteem, and environmental factors including social isolation, community integration and service use. Results: The study results indicated that people diagnosed with schizophrenia in Japan experience higher levels of loneliness, corroborating results from other countries. Multiple regression analysis showed that a lower level of self-efficacy for community life, self-esteem, community integration and social isolation predicted a higher level of loneliness, accounting for 55.3% of

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“…However, only 2% of the variance in loneliness was explained in the first model, and in the final model, loneliness did not have significant association with any of the socio-demographics after adjusting for psychosocial and psychiatric variables. This finding is consistent with the previous research in people with psychosis [9,36,40], although socio-demographic characteristics have been reported as linked to individual differences in loneliness in studies of general population [41,42]. It is possible that the social impact of having a significant mental health problem is sufficiently severe that it overrides other sociodemographic factors which might, otherwise, be expected to make a difference in loneliness.…”

Loneliness And Self Concept Among Psychiatric Patients In Port Said Psychiatric Health Hospital

“…These results are agreed to the result of Shiod et al (2016) who examined loneliness among people diagnosed with schizophrenia living in Japanese communities, and found that lower level of selfconcept is related to a higher level of loneliness because decreased ability to complete the activities performed before the onset of illness compels individuals to evaluate themselves negatively, which means that they cannot make correct judgments about their ability or strength, leading to greater loneliness, the degree of social support from family members or friends has an effect on loneliness and the higher level of community integration could reduce a level of loneliness; but this results Said Scientific Journal of Nursing Vol.6, No.3 , December 2019, Special Issue 261 was not supported by the result of the study of Schwartz & Gronemann (2009)…”

Comparison of schizophrenia outpatients in residential care facilities with those living with someone: Study of mental and physical health, cognitive functioning, and biomarkers of aging

“…Findings on psychological well-being are mixed, with reports of similar or improved life satisfaction and similar or less severe depression (Gupta et al, 2003;Nelson et al, 1997;Weiner et al, 2010). Published reports have not directly compared persons living in RCFs with those living with someone else, in order to examine the possible impact of RCF services on outcomes without the potential confounding influence of social networks, social isolation, or loneliness (Cohen and Sokolovsky, 1979;Pjescic et al, 2014;Shioda et al, 2016;Tremeau et al, 2016). To our knowledge, no other studies have compared mental and physical health measures as well as biomarkers of aging between RCF residents and those living with someone in an independent setting (house or apartment).…”