Loneliness is gaining attention globally as a public health issue because elevated loneliness increases one's risk for depression, compromised immunity, chronic illness, and mortality. Our objective is to zoom into how loneliness has historically evolved through midlife and investigate whether elevations in loneliness are confined to the United States or are similarly transpiring across peer European nations. We use harmonized data on loneliness from nationally representative longitudinal panel surveys from the United States and 13 European nations to directly quantify similarities and differences in historical change of midlife loneliness trajectories. Compared with any other European nation/region, overall levels of loneliness in the United States are consistently higher by a magnitude of 0.3-0.8 SDs. Middle-aged adults in the United States, England, and Mediterranean Europe today report higher levels of loneliness than earlier born cohorts, whereas no historical changes (if not historically lower levels) were observed in Continental and Nordic Europe. Our discussion focuses on possible reasons for cross-national differences in midlife loneliness, including cultural factors, social and economic inequalities, and differences in social safety nets. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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中年孤独感：与欧洲相比，美国的历史增长和水平升高。


孤独感作为一个公共卫生问题正在全球范围内受到关注，因为孤独感的加剧会增加人们患抑郁症、免疫力受损、慢性病和死亡的风险。我们的目标是深入了解孤独感在中年历史上是如何演变的，并调查孤独感的上升是否仅限于美国，还是在欧洲其他国家也存在类似情况。我们使用来自美国和 13 个欧洲国家的全国代表性纵向面板调查的统一孤独数据，直接量化中年孤独轨迹历史变化的异同。与任何其他欧洲国家/地区相比，美国的总体孤独感水平始终较高，高出 0.3-0.8 个标准差。如今，美国、英国和地中海欧洲的中年人比早期出生的人群感到孤独感更高，而欧洲大陆和北欧则没有观察到历史变化（如果不是历史上较低的水平）。我们的讨论重点是中年孤独感存在跨国差异的可能原因，包括文化因素、社会和经济不平等以及社会安全网的差异。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。