Editorial

摘要

The motto of the Jo Cox Foundation is "Combatting loneliness one conversation at a time" (www.jocoxloneliness.org/). Jo Cox was assassinated while a Member of Parliament by a right-wing fanatic, but her work on social inclusion and participation for about nine million lonely people in the UK continues. The foundation's latest report on loneliness has just been welcomed by Prime Minister Theresa May, who promised "to take action" to address loneliness (Walker, 2018). Both objective social isolation and subjective feelings of being alone are associated with raised all-cause mortality (Leigh-Hunt et al., 2017). Various aspects of loneliness are related to poor mental health or suicide, with the most consistent relationship being between social isolation and depression (Leigh-Hunt et al., 2017).