Tell Me about Loneliness: Interviews with Young People about What Loneliness Is and How to Cope with It

Background: loneliness is a common experience for adolescents, yet the voices of adolescents are missing from current conceptualisations of loneliness. That means, measures that have been created based on current conceptualisations may miss important contexts of adolescence, such as the roles of friendships, that determine the way loneliness is experienced. The current study aims to centre adolescent voices to identify how they conceptualise loneliness and what strategies they consider to be useful for adolescents to cope with loneliness. Method: thematic framework analysis (TFA) was conducted on qualitative interviews with young people aged 8–14 years in Belgium and Italy to identify salient themes in their conceptualisations of loneliness. Results: Loneliness was conceptualised as a negative emotional state involving negative thinking patterns that occurs when an individual perceives they are missing out on a desired aspect in their social relationships. Coping strategies related to alleviating negative affect, and aiding social reconnection. Conclusions: friendships with peers were understood to be central to adolescent loneliness experiences. In line with that, loneliness was seen to be experienced at school. Age-related differences in friendship expectations were identified, highlighting how developmental needs relate to the loneliness experience.

Recovery of individual Service personnel in the COVID-19 recovery phase

To deny the SARS-CoV-2 virus easy options for sustained transmission, commanders should model adherence to, and ensure implementation of, social mitigation measures. While some measures can be achieved at the organisational level through policy, every Service person’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic will have differed, affected by a range of personal, occupational and geographical factors. A successful recovery phase for each Service personnel (SP) therefore relies on localised assessments and individualised support plans. The return of SP to the physical environment must be safe, and the financial needs of their whole family must be considered. Commanders must understand the need for balance in supporting social reconnection both personally and in the workplace. Commanders have an important role in the development of SPs’ mental resilience; supporting mental well-being, early recognition of deteriorating mental health and signposting, and compassionate understanding of the needs of SP deployed or bereaved. Disruptions to healthcare service provision will impact the duration of medical downgrading, workforce capacity and operational effectiveness according to extant parameters, which must be understood by commanders. Likewise, functional fitness may have been adversely affected. Physical health and fitness recovery can be supported by time-based extensions to occupational health policy and graduated return to work physical training programmes.

Sociality and temporality in local experiences of distress and healing: Ethnographic research in northern Rwanda

Prior studies have traced sociality and temporality as significant features of African healing. However, association between the two has not been explicitly investigated. This paper explores how sociality and temporality are associated in local experiences of distress and healing among northern Rwandans. The ethnographic research, including in-depth interviews, focus-group discussions and participant observation, was conducted in 2015–2016, with 43 participants from the Musanze district who have suffered from not only the genocide but also post-genocide massacres. Findings identified common local idioms of distress: ibikomere (wounded feelings), ihungabana (mental disturbances), ihahamuka (trauma), and kurwara mu mutwe (illness of the head, severe mental illness). One stage of distress was perceived to develop into another, slightly more serious than the previous. Social isolation played a significant role in the development as it activated ‘remembering’ and ‘thinking too much’ about the past and worsened symptoms. Subsequently, healing was experienced through social reconnection and a shift of time orientation from the past to the future; the healing experience traced a process of leaving the past behind, moving forwards and creating a future through community involvement. The experiences of distress and healing in this population were explained by two axes, i.e. sociality (isolation – reconnection) and temporality (past – future), which are associated with each other. Given the sociality–temporality association in African post-war healing, the study highlights that assistant programmes that facilitate social practice and future creation can be therapeutic and be an alternative for people who cannot benefit from talking-based and trauma-focused approaches.

The Push of Social Pain: Does Rejection’s Sting Motivate Subsequent Social Reconnection?

Physical pain motivates the healing of somatic injuries. Yet it remains unknown whether social pain serves a similarly reparative function towards social injuries. Given the substantial overlap between physical and social pain, we predicted that social pain would mediate the effect of rejection on greater motivation for social reconnection and affiliative behavior towards rejecters. In Study 1, the effect of rejection on an increased need to belong was mediated by reports of more intense social pain. In Study 2, three neural signatures of social pain (i.e., activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, left and right anterior insula during social rejection), each predicted greater behavioral proximity to rejecters. Our findings reify the overlap between social and physical pain. Further, these results are some of the first to demonstrate the reparative nature of social pain and lend insight into how this process may be harnessed to promote post-rejection reconnection.

Recovering from the Ebola crisis: ‘Social Reconnection Groups’ in a rural Liberian community

In 2014/2015, International Medical Corps (IMC) operated two Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs) in Liberia and three in Sierra Leone when the Ebola virus disease epidemic killed over 11,000 people across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. As Ebola cases declined in Liberia, IMC Psychosocial teams transitioned to working in communities highly affected by the epidemic. This article describes IMC's experience with developing and implementing a community-based mental health and psychosocial group intervention in a rural, severely affected Liberian town – Mawah – where 46 out of approximately 800 community members were infected, 39 of whom died. In this paper, we present how the group intervention, named ‘Social Reconnection Groups’, was developed and implemented. We then discuss intervention strengths, challenges, key lessons learnt and recommendations for how Social Reconnection Groups can be adapted for use in similar settings.