Causes of loneliness departure of an older child from the family home. Many factors can contribute to the experience Situations that cut us off from the mainstream of of isolation and especially loneliness. Following society, such as unemployment, poverty, mental Perlman and Peplau (1984) it may be helpful to illness or old age, also put us at a heightened distinguish between the predisposing factors risk of feeling lonely, as do those in which people and situational determinants which make people need an unusual level of support: disability, drug vulnerable to loneliness and precipitating events or alcohol addiction, caring for a relative or being that trigger the onset of loneliness. a lone parent. Research carried out in the US suggests that people from ethnic minority groups Predisposing factors can include characteristics may be more prone to experiencing loneliness, of the person (e.g. low self-esteem, shyness, but there is not enough evidence in the UK lack of assertiveness), characteristics of the context to confirm this. situation (e.g. lack of resources, competitive “Precipitating events create a mismatch between environments), and general cultural values (e.g. the person’s actual social relations and the individualism). Precipitating events are factors person’s social needs or desires; a change in such as the breakup of a relationship or moving one of these two factors without a corresponding to a new community which change a person’s change in the other can produce loneliness. Finally, social life in some significant way. we believe that cognitive processes can influence Circumstances that test our resilience to the experience of loneliness.” (Perlman and Peplau loneliness include major transitions such as 1984: 23) These diverse causal factors are outlined moving home or job, bereavement, divorce schematically in the diagram below. or separation, the arrival of a new baby or the Fig. 3: Model of the causes of loneliness (Perlman and Peplau 1984) PREDISPOSING FACTORS Needed or Characteristics desired social of the person  relations Mismatch of needed Experience Characteristics +PRECIPITATING and actual + Cognitions of loneliness of the situation EVENT social and attributions  relations Cultural values  Actual social and norms relations It is important to note that the causes of isolation and loneliness are not necessarily the same, adding more weight to the argument to treat them as separate concepts. For example, one study found that some variables were better at predicting social isolation than loneliness, while some predicted both. Isolation and loneliness 9