‘The invisible enemy’: disability, loneliness and isolation

Abstract

The aim of this article is to quantitatively explore the relationship between disability, emotional loneliness and social isolation. The data analysis presents a number of statistically significant findings which illustrate that disabled people (N = 250) were at increased risk of experiencing emotional loneliness and social isolation compared with the nondisabled group (N = 355). This study identifies a number of disabling barriers which result in this overrepresentation of disabled people. The study aims to move away from a pathological explanation of linking loneliness and social isolation to disability, in order to explain this occurrence from a barrier-based approach.

Keywords:

• emotional loneliness
• social isolation
• quantitative methods
• disabling barriers
• inclusive methodology

Notes

1 In order to develop an inclusive research team all community volunteers are to be named in all future publications.

2 It should be noted that the 36.7% result is calculated using the total sample size of 680 participants. This includes missing data of 75 participants who did not state if they had an impairment or not. The later population sample of disability that refers to 41.3% (see Table 1) excludes any missing data and is calculated using a population sample of 605 participants. It is this population sample that has been used in the data analysis.