We found that ageing brings about a series of inevitable losses that deeply challenge people’s sense of connection to the world around them. Loneliness can often be oversimplified or reduced to how many friends a person has or how often they see their loved ones.But a particular focus for us was to better understand what underpins feelings of loneliness in older people on a deeper level. Researchers have used the term “existential loneliness” to describe this deeper sense of feeling “separated from the world” – as though there is an insurmountable gap between oneself and the rest of society. Our objective was to listen carefully to how people experienced and responded to this.

A difficult yet worthwhile read.