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Urinary cortisol levels, cellular immunocompetency, and loneliness in psychiatric inpatients.

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TLDR
Patients who scored above the median on loneliness had significantly higher urinary cortisol levels and had significantly lower levels of natural killer cell activity, as well as a poorer T‐lymphocyte response to phytohemagglutinin.
Abstract
This study examined the associations among loneliness, stressful life events, urinary cortisol levels, and immunocompetency. Blood and urine were obtained from 33 psychiatric inpatients on the day after admission, at which time the patients completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview Life Events Scale (PERI), and the MMPI. Patients who scored above the median on loneliness had significantly higher urinary cortisol levels. The high loneliness group also had significantly lower levels of natural killer cell activity, as well as a poorer T-lymphocyte response to phytohemagglutinin. The high loneliness subjects descibed themselves as more distressed than the low loneliness group on the MMPI. There were no consistent significant effects on either the immunologic measures or the MMPI associated with the PERI.

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The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

TL;DR: Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation, and people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds.
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Health complaints, stress, and distress: exploring the central role of negative affectivity.

TL;DR: Results demonstrate the importance of including different types of health measures in health psychology research, and indicate that self-report health measures reflect a pervasive mood disposition of negative affectivity (NA), which will act as a general nuisance factor in health research.
Journal ArticleDOI

Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms

TL;DR: The features and consequences of loneliness are reviewed within a comprehensive theoretical framework that informs interventions to reduce loneliness and features of a loneliness regulatory loop are employed to explain cognitive, behavioral, and physiological consequences.
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Attachment as an Organizational Framework for Research on Close Relationships

TL;DR: A review of the major bodies of empirical literature on attachment theory can be found in this article, where the authors conclude that a comprehensive theory of close relationships is both desirable and, with the integration of existing theories and concepts, currently achievable.
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The clinical significance of loneliness: a literature review.

TL;DR: This review focuses on loneliness as a crucial marker of social relationship deficits and contends that loneliness should command clinicians' attention in its own right--not just as an adjunct to the treatment of other problems such as depression.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Some Studies of the Protein-Binding of Steroids and Their Application to the Routine Micro and Ultramicro Measurement of Various Steroids in Body Fluids by Competitive Protein-Binding Radioassay

TL;DR: A 100-fold increase in sensitivity has now been achieved by using tritiated steroids in place of 14C-labeled steroids, by utilizing the CBG's of species other than man, and by using adsorption in Place of dialysis or gel filtration.
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Loneliness: A Sourcebook of Current Theory, Research and Therapy.

TL;DR: In this article, a wide range of in-depth research into loneliness and its treatment is presented, such as the difference between loneliness and being alone, the various types of loneliness, why people become lonely, and how the lonely can be helped.
Journal ArticleDOI

Exemplification of a method for scaling life events: the Peri Life Events Scale.

TL;DR: This paper challenges several arguments for rejecting the rationale of Holmes' and Rahe's Social Readjustment Rating Scale and proposes procedural improvements for three aspects of life-event scale construction: construction of a life- event list, selection of judges, and tests of whether judges agree on their ratings.
Journal ArticleDOI

Depressed lymphocyte function after bereavement.

TL;DR: This is the first time severe psychological stress has been shown to produce a measurable abnormality in immune function which is not obviously caused by hormonal changes.
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