ABSTRACT
This chapter is a prequel to the next one, looking at suffering. A common contemporary focus in public health is loneliness. Whether or not people enter the formal status of being a patient, or present to primary care with a ‘common mental disorder’, to some extent we all live with the threat of experiencing distress. That threat is socially contingent: circumstances can emerge which makes people happy, or unhappy by happenstance. The same applies to loneliness which is bound up with a range of factors, which enable or prevent participation in social life and valued activities with others. These contingencies reflect a biopsychosocial web of factors, which vary over time and place and, in part, reflect variations in internal psychological robustness or vulnerability. The latter is tested out for us by the vagaries of socio-economic contingencies. Those differences in resilience may be outside of the control of individuals.
