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A variety of factors contribute to the degree to which a person feels lonely and socially isolated. These factors may be particularly relevant in contexts requiring social distancing, e.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic or in states of immunodeficiency. We present the Loneliness and Isolation during Social Distancing (LISD) Scale. Extending existing measures, the LISD scale measures both state and trait aspects of loneliness and isolation, including indicators of social connectedness and support. In addition, it reliably predicts individual differences in anxiety and depression. Data were collected online from two independent samples in a social distancing context (the COVID-19 pandemic). Factorial validation was based on exploratory factor analysis (EFA; Sample 1, N = 244) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; Sample 2, N = 304). Multiple regression analyses were used to assess how the LISD scale predicts state anxiety and depression. The LISD scale showed satisfactory fit in both samples. Its two state factors indicate being lonely and isolated as well as connected and supported, while its three trait factors reflect general loneliness and isolation, sociability and sense of belonging, and social closeness and support. Our results imply strong predictive power of the LISD scale for state anxiety and depression, explaining 33 and 51% of variance, respectively. Anxiety and depression scores were particularly predicted by low dispositional sociability and sense of belonging and by currently being more lonely and isolated. In turn, being lonely and isolated was related to being less connected and supported (state) as well as having lower social closeness and support in general (trait). We provide a novel scale which distinguishes between acute and general dimensions of loneliness and social isolation while also predicting mental health. The LISD scale could be a valuable and economic addition to the assessment of mental health factors impacted by social distancing.
In this article dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre’s first novel La Nausée, we analyze how the idea of conversion to art grows in the imagination of the hero, Antoine Roquentin. Furthermore we show that all the narrative actions in the novel are based on the hero’s communicational interaction with the other characters. This lonely person who complains in his diary about social exclusion, yet he converts to art not through his reflections, but through communica-ting with the other characters. Also, many critical studies on La Nausée have considered jazz music that the hero listens to in a café as the critical moment of his conversion. In our opinion this reflects juste one phase of a connected sequence of events through which the hero passes from a state of relational negativity and existential alienation to a state of openness, achieved again mainly by the virtue of other characters.