The study combined European Social Survey Round 6 data from 48,377 respondents in 29 countries, prospective Health and Retirement Study intervals and exploratory Mendelian randomisation to ask whether social measures beyond loneliness add information about psychological distress. Loneliness had the largest standardised coefficient (b = 0.221 per SD), 4.3 times the next largest, and added 0.074 to AUC, whereas all other social variables added 0.006. In the Health and Retirement Study, baseline loneliness predicted next-wave depressive symptoms (b = 0.108), and the genetic analysis could not establish direction.
Why it is interesting: Compares loneliness with broader social measures as predictors of psychological distress, across a cross-sectional survey, a prospective cohort and a genetic analysis.