Sasha Scambler ~ "Loneliness, conflation and ideology" (from the Cost Of Living blog)

Sasha Scambler is a medical sociologist based at King’s College London. Her main research interests are disability and long term conditions, inequality, social theory and old age.

These excerpts are re-posted from the Cost Of Living blog. Please access and read the full and original post via the Cost Of Living site: http://www.cost-ofliving.net/loneliness-conflation-and-ideology/.

“1 in 10 over 65s are 'chronically lonely' ”.

“The term loneliness is used as if there is a shared understanding of what it means”.

“The consensus view is that loneliness results from a deficiency in a person’s social relationships”.

“The danger is that conflating loneliness with social isolation and exclusion and then seeking to address these problems through targeted, often individualised, interventions fails to address the wider structural issues such as ideology and the relationship between individualism and society”.