Cited by 1,206Health disparities and outcomesAnxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesDeath Anxiety and Social Exclusion

Loneliness: clinical import and interventions

Open access
Cacioppo, Stephanie, Grippo, Angela J., London, Sarah, Goossens, Luc, Cacioppo, John T.·2015·Perspectives on Psychological Science

Abstract

In 1978, when the Task Panel report to the US President's Commission on Mental Health emphasized the importance of improving health care and easing the pain of those suffering from emotional distress syndromes including loneliness, few anticipated that this issue would still need to be addressed 40 years later. A meta-analysis (Masi et al., 2011) on the efficacy of treatments to reduce loneliness identified a need for well-controlled randomized clinical trials focusing on the rehabilitation of maladaptive social cognition. We review assessments of loneliness and build on this meta-analysis to discuss the efficacy of various treatments for loneliness. With the advances made over the past 5 years in the identification of the psychobiological and pharmaceutical mechanisms associated with loneliness and maladaptive social cognition, there is increasing evidence for the potential efficacy of integrated interventions that combine (social) cognitive behavioral therapy with short-term adjunctive pharmacological treatments.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/1745691615570616

Cites

109 of 109 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Distress disorders involve negative self-referentiality including worry, rumination, self-criticism, and loneliness.

    “negative self-referentiality including worry, rumination [15, 16], self-criticism [17] and loneliness (i.e., perceived social isolation) [18, 19]”
  • Social connection buffers mental well-being.

    “Understanding the nature of this need is central to appreciating how social connection buffers mental well-being (3).”

    From A transdiagnostic perspective on social anhedonia (2019) · cites this paper as [3]

  • An emerging body of work demonstrates detrimental effects of loneliness and social disconnection on physical and mental health.

    “It is becoming particularly important to understand this given the emerging body of work demonstrating the detrimental effects of loneliness and social disconnection on physical and mental health (3, 64, 206).”

    From A transdiagnostic perspective on social anhedonia (2019) · cites this paper as [3]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Ostrov E Offer D 1978 Adolescent youth and society Chicago University of Chicago Press
  2. Tillich P 1959 The external now Feifel H The meaning of death 30 38 New York McGraw-Hill
  3. Young JE 1982 Loneliness, depression and cognitive therapy: Theory and application Peplau LA Perlman D Loneliness: A sourcebook of current theory, research and therapy 379 406 New York Wiley

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Cacioppo, S., Grippo, A. J., London, S., Goossens, L., & Cacioppo, J. T.
Affiliations
  • University of Chicago (US)
  • Northern Illinois University (US)
  • KU Leuven (BE)
Venue
Perspectives on Psychological Science
Published
2015-03
Volume
10
Issue
2
Pages
238-249
ISSN
  • 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
  • 1745-6924
OpenAlex
W2137123520
Cited by
1,206
References
109
Citations by year
2026: 111 · 2025: 150 · 2024: 148 · 2023: 148 · 2022: 157 · 2021: 167 · 2020: 100 · 2019: 84 · 2018: 55 · 2017: 41 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 14
FWCI
57.56
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Perspectives on Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
National Institute on Aging (R37AG033590)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
Keywords
loneliness, cognitive behavioral therapy, pharmacotherapy, psychobiological mechanisms, emotional distress, social isolation, treatment efficacy
MeSH terms
Humans, Loneliness, Psychotropic Drugs, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review