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Loneliness is associated with a variety of physical and mental health problems as well as mortality. In the mental health context, loneliness is sometimes viewed as a symptom of mental disorder rather than a problem in its own right. The purpose of this paper is to assess the importance of addressing loneliness amongst mental health service users.

Narrative overview of current literature on loneliness and health outcomes.

Loneliness is highly prevalent amongst adults with a variety of different mental health diagnoses in the UK. Preliminary evidence suggests that loneliness is not a symptom of mental health conditions themselves, and thus is likely to be either a cause or a consequence of mental ill-health. Lacking good quality social relationships is a risk factor for a wide range of health problems. The evidence for interventions targeting loneliness in different populations is lacking. New interventions and further research to tackle loneliness amongst service users is warranted.

Loneliness has not historically been a key target for intervention within mental health services. This paper collates the evidence base to provide the foundation for a new wave of interventions to target the perceived social isolation of service users.

Law requires translations in order to make the mundane world legible to the legal sphere. This translation requires transposing an infinite landscape of ethical possibilities into a set number of categories, modes of speech, reasoning, and histories. The body represents both a challenge to this translation while illuminating the historical contingency of the contaminants that ineluctably shape law’s responsiveness. This chapter is concerned with the way the figure of the body in law acts as a kind of absent presence through the writ of habeas corpus, what Roberto Esposito (2015) calls ‘the silent mechanism that facilitates the passage from one mechanism to another through the chain of symbols engendered by its very presence’. The author would like to trace this chain of symbols which permits the passage from differing legal mechanisms through the history of the writ of habeas corpus to examine how it served as one vehicle through which law established predominance in Colonial British Columbia. Through British Columbia colonial legal history, this chapter will examine how Habeas corpus was used to more than merely seize jurisdiction but, more pointedly, to mobilise images of sovereignty to bolster local, contingent, and contextual forms of authority and sovereignty. In the end, the author’s argument will contribute to an understanding of the various mechanisms and discourses that sought to envelope the differing peoples, landscapes, and topographies of British Columbia into a single normative and affective legal atmosphere, as lawmakers sought to distinguish themselves from their southern neighbour’s colonial experience.

“GIVE a dog a bad name and hang him,” is an aphorism which has been accepted for many years. But, like many other household words, it is not always true. Even if it were, the dog to be operated upon would probably prefer a gala day at his Tyburn Tree to being executed in an obscure back yard.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Lockdowns are generally characterised by financial depletion, loneliness, stress, depression, loss of jobs and businesses, among others. The effect of the recent lockdown in Ghana as a result of COVID-19 pandemic has not been different. The primary question this study seeks to answer is: are lockdowns only characterised by negativity, or could there be a positive side that has not yet been harnessed?

To answer this question, the authors rely on a dataset of 879 observations obtained through an online survey administered from 25 April to 3 May 2020. Using a regression approach, the authors applied an ordered probit econometric technique with its associated predicted margins.

The authors show evidence that in the midst of the negativity surrounding the lockdown, social connectedness is evident, especially in relatively less busy cities. The authors recommend that instead of losing oneself through social isolation and loneliness during lockdowns, people should use lockdowns as an opportunity to build and exhibit social capital and harness the opportunities associated with it. The authors also recommend that during lockdowns, channels of social connectedness should be made easily accessible and cheaper through a well-targeted government subsidy programme for the poor.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is a novel study that provides the first empirical evidence on the relationship between coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic lockdown and social connectedness.