We recently worked with the University of York’s School for Business and Society in a strategic communication partnership, helping them shape and manage their newly formed social channels, and promote their research to a wider audience through targeted press releases, all with the aim of increasing the impact of the research coming out of the department.
One of our roles was to regularly speak with the individual academics working in the department, find out about what they were working on, and think about the best ways to help them create impact for their work.
One of these conversations was with Ruth Naughton-Doe, an academic who shared her fascinating research into the acute loneliness often experienced by new parents, known as perinatal loneliness.
Loneliness has a profound impact on physical and mental well-being, and there is strong evidence to suggest that loneliness can cause perinatal mental illness or make existing problems worse. Addressing loneliness may therefore be one promising approach to preventing or reducing perinatal mental illness.
Ruth began her NIHR-supported research into this area off the back of experiencing loneliness herself as a parent, becoming interested in hearing the experiences of others and finding out the root causes behind them. Now, she has released a report summarising some of the findings from her work.
Her research has involved recording and collecting the experiences of new parents from all walks of life. Participants interviewed in the study included four fathers, one trans parent, three LGBTQ+ parents, one solo parent, one Asian parent, and one Mixed / Multiple Ethnicity parent. Three parents identified as neurodiverse, eleven identified that they had poor mental health prior to becoming parents, and thirteen reported this following becoming a parent. On top of these interviews, many more experiences were collected in focus groups.
Three types of loneliness were examined throughout the project. Social loneliness is when a parent lacks a fulfilling social network, and emotional loneliness is when parents lack people to confide in. Existential loneliness is where a person feels disconnected from other people, or meaningless and lacking purpose.
The report details the huge variety of factors that contribute to loneliness as a parent, and how differences in individuals’ circumstances can magnify these feelings. For any new parents out there, anyone who knows others who are now embarking on parenthood, or anyone just looking to find out more, it is well worth a read.
Visit Ruth’s website to find out more about her research
Image credit: Aditya Romansa