ABSTRAKTBakgrund: Coronaviruset som spreds 2019 resulterade i en pandemi. Miljontals människor världen över smittades och avled. Hög ålder var främsta riskfaktor och åldersbaserade restriktioner gällande social isolering och social distansering infördes. Endast äldre i samhället är riktigt införstådda med vad det innebär att ha just den där åldern och därför bör de lyssnas till. Genom att förstå komplexiteten i äldres upplevelser, kan personcentrerade interventioner utvecklas för att optimera äldres copingförmåga.Syfte: Att belysa tillgänglig evidens gällande äldres upplevelser av isolering under coronapandemin.Metod: Systematisk översikt genomförd som metasyntes med kvalitativ induktiv ansats som omfattade 12 artiklar. Analys gjordes enligt Burnards (2008) innehållsanalys med tillägg av Polit och Beck (2021).Resultat: Ett övergripande huvudtema framkom, Anpassning till utanförskap i en förändrad värld med två teman och sju kategorier. Under första temat: En förlorad vardag framkom att en orolig tid uppstod med svårigheter att förhålla sig till en förändrad livssituation. Under andra temat: En ny vardag framkom att äldre anpassade sig till det nya normala. Genom tillgängliga resurser hittades nya vägar för att hantera det dagliga livet.Slutsats: I resultatet framkom att äldre upplevde utanförskap under isoleringen, kulturella paralleller kunde dras, och teknologin var av stor betydelse. Äldre kände sig inte lyssnade till eller delaktiga. Likheter och skillnader gällande hantering av restriktioner av pandemin samt upplevelser av isoleringen varierade. Beroendet av teknik ökade för att bevara sociala relationer, underlätta vardagen och upprätthålla livskvalité.Nyckelord: Coronapandemi, social isolering, upplevelser, äldre / ABSTRACTBackground: The coronavirus that spread in 2019 resulted in a pandemic. Millions of people around the world became infected and died. Old age was the main risk factor, and restrictions on social isolation, and social distancing were introduced based on age. However, only older people in society understand what it means to have that particular age, and therefore they should be listened to. By understanding the complexity of the older people`s experiences, person-centered interventions can be developed to optimize the older people`s coping ability.Aim: To illuminate available evidence regarding the older people`s experiences of isolation during the corona pandemic.Method: Systematic review performed as meta synthesis with qualitative inductive approach as comprehensive 12 articles. Analysis was done according to Burnard’s (2008) content analysis with the addition of Polit and Beck (2021).Results: An overall main theme emerged, Adjusting to exclusion in a changing world, with two themes and seven categories. Under the first theme: A lost everyday life emerged that a troubled time arose with difficulties in dealing with a changed life situation. Under the second theme: A new everyday life emerged that the elderly adapted to the new normal. Through available resources new ways were found to manage daily life.Conclusion: The result showed that older people experienced exclusion during the isolation, cultural parallels could be drawn, and technology was of great importance. Older people did not feel listened to or involved. Similarities and differences regarding handling pandemic restrictions and experiences of isolation varied. Dependence on technology increased to preserve social relationships, facilitate everyday life and maintain quality of life.Keywords: Corona pandemic, experience, social isolation, older people

There is now considerable evidence that both schizophrenia and affective disorders have their origin at least in part in events that occur during early pre- and post-natal development. In the case of schizophrenia, many observations, for example, increased risk for schizophrenia in the offspring of mothers who had influenza A during their second trimester of pregnancy and evidence for abnormal neuronal migration in the cerebral cortex of post mortem tissue from schizophrenic patients, suggest that a second trimester insult may have occurred and that this insult may have increased the risk for the development of schizophrenia in late adolescence or early adulthood. Animal studies have found that rats that undergo excitotxic damage to the ventral hippocampus on postnatal day 7 develop exaggerated sensitivity to dopamine-stimulating drugs or to stressful stimuli that becomes apparent after sexual maturity but not before, providing a neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia. Similarly, post-weaning social isolation leads to nehanced responses to dopaminergic drgus and to stress that emerges after sexual maturity. These animal models are proving to be valuable tools to study the neurobiological mechanisms mediating the influence of early insults to the nervous system on later behavioural functins. In the case of affective disorders, although the evidence is not as strong, a number of the same observations have been made suggesting that an insult during early ontogeny may lead to the development of affective disorders later in life. For example, retrospective studies of people with affective disorders showed that they were more likely to have attained motor milestones at a later age and to have had poorer academic performance as children. There is a wealth of evidence suggesting hyperfunctioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in affective disorders. Animal studies have shown that early matenal deprivation can lead to lasting changes in the reactivity of the HPA axis to stressful stimuli, providing another link from early experience to adult psychopathology. Continued studies of the effects of pre- and early post-natal events on the development of the nervous system and the relationships of these events to schizophrenia or affective disorder will provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying these common neuropsychiatric illnesses.

With yearly rates ranking clearly above world average in Europe, suicide constitutes a substantial public health problem. Because of that, prevention has become a major concern for German mental health institutions. A requirement for successful prevention strategies is to address all key factors that contribute to suicidality. It is highly relevant in this respect that suicidal behaviour itself exhibits a social gradient: drawing on the relevant literature, low socioeconomic status (SES) and a high extent of social isolation (SI) are related to increased suicide risks (Lorant et al. 2005; Li et al. 2011; Qin et al. 2003; Agerbo et al. 2007). The purpose of this study was therefore to add to these findings and to further investigate associations of SES and SI with suicide in order to define starting points for public health interventions. It was consequently hypothesized that lower individual levels of SES and higher individual levels of SI are correlated with increased suicide rates. SI potentially compromises the perception of social support in stressful live events associated with low SES (Cohen et al. 2006; Kumari et al. 2010). Since such life events correlate with suicidal behavior (Beautrais et al. 1997; Cohen et al. 2019), the effects of low SES were further hypothesized to be aggravated in individuals with high SI levels (SES x SI interaction). In order to test the hypotheses, all 149.033 suicide deaths between 1997 and 2010 (T = 14 years) were extracted from the official German death record as coded by ICD categories E950 - E959 for 1997 and X60 - X84 for the years from 1998 onwards, respectively. Information on SES and SI was gained by merging the dataset with Germany’s main household survey, i.e. the Microcensus. In accordance with the existing literature, established indexes on occupational status (ISEI, Ganzeboom & Treiman 1996) and educational achievements (CASMIN, König et al. 1988) were applied as well as items on income, minor employment, unemployment, the number of received public transfers and the reception of social bene fits due to unemployment (ALG I/II) in order to capture SES. SI was proxied with variables measuring single marital status, living in a one-person-household and relocations throughout the year before the survey was conducted. Due to German data protection regulations that do not permit the analysis of death record data based on individual level information, suicide deaths were examined as aggregated rates at the level of N = 390 administrative districts. In order to deal with two problems associated with this kind of statistical analysis, Prentice and Sheppard’s model for aggregate data (1995) was applied accounting for potential estimation biases due to differences in baseline suicide rates between districts and between time periods. The model specification further corrected for spatial effect correlations. An important limitation to this procedure is that the estimates represent a blend of effects at the individual and district levels. However, an adequate solution is only available through the application of individual level data. The statistical analysis turned out the following results: The positive effect on suicide rates of unemployment and the negative effect of income as two out of seven SES proxies and the positive effect of living in a one-person-household as one out of three SI proxies validate the proposed hypotheses on the relations of SES and SI with suicide rates. Confirming the hypothesis on SI mediating SES effects, the model revealed positive effects on suicide rates of income decreases in single individuals. Likewise, we observed positive effects on district suicide rates for decreasing levels of CASMIN in district population shares who had relocated throughout the past year. In contradiction to the theoretical claims, however, increases in CASMIN scores were found to result in positive effects on suicide rates just as a history of relocation prior to suicide was related to decreasing suicide rates. Furthermore, decreases in income were found to result in negative effects on suicide rates in the district population of persons living in a one-person-household. The results indicating associations of SES and SI with increases in district suicide rates represent appropriate starting points for the definition of suicide prevention strategies. Thus, particularly the unemployed, individuals with low incomes, persons living in one-person-households and relocated individuals with lower educational levels should be targeted by public health interventions. Moreover, the observations of the present study clearly demonstrate the significance of longitudinal individual level data for public health policies. Respective research incorporating such data would permit a better understanding of the causal mechanisms resulting in suicidality and help to further investigate the robustness of the shown results. By this means, prevention strategies could be better adapted to the specfic needs of the individuals under concern. Regarding the findings contradicting the theoretical claims, it needs to be mentioned that associations of low SES and high SI levels with increases in suicide risks can not be ruled out at the individual level. Rather, the observed inconsistent effects might be attributable to differences in district compositions than to differences in characteristics of the respective subjects. Also a statistical separation of compositional effects from effects of individual traits would be made possible by including individual level data in future work.:Abbrevations II Tables II 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Suicide - A Global Health Burden 1 1.2 Risk Factors and Etiology of Suicide 1 1.3 Suicide Prevention 2 1.4 Social Disparities in Suicide 2 1.4.1 Socioeconomic Status 2 1.4.2 Social Isolation 3 1.4.3 Health Inequalities and Health Inequities 4 1.4.4 Causation and Selection 5 1.4.5 Individual Life Courses 7 1.5 Stress and Diathesis 8 1.5.1 Critical Life Events 9 1.6 Neurobiological Correlates of Suicidality 9 1.6.1 Neurobiological Correlates of SES and SI 10 1.7 SES, SI and Social Support 11 1.8 Aims of the Thesis 11 1.9 Methods 12 2 Original Publication 14 Summary 23 References 26 Supplementary Materials - Further Statistical Tests & Models 41 Structural Breaks in Suicide Numbers 41 Age- and Gender-Adjustment of District Suicide Rates 42 Alternate Model Specifications Anlagen i Erklärung über die eigenständige Abfassung der Arbeit i Spezifizierung des eigenen wissenschaftlichen Beitrags iii Danksagung iii

Detta projekt undersöker social isolering och ensamhet bland äldre. Målet med projektet är att öka sällskapligheten bland äldre. Metoderna bygger på en användarcentrerad strategi och med kvalitativ forskning och kvantitativ data som genereras. Som en del av en interaktionsdesignstudie. Teorier om vad som har gjorts i fältet presenteras och relaterat arbete för att förstå fältet. Insikten från den empiriska studien definierar problem i designprocessen, från intervjuerna och undersökningen. I designprocessen presenteras såväl metoder som används för att skapa idéer som resultatet. Designprocessen presenterar nio koncept som en lösning på forskningsfrågan. Avslutningen och diskussionen presenterar nya idéer och tankar om hur projektet kan ha tagits i en annan designmetod och utforskning. / This project explores social isolation and loneliness among elders. The goal of the project is to increase sociability among elders. The methods are based on a user-centered approach and with qualitative research and quantitative data generated. As part of an interaction design study. Theories about what has been done in the field are presented and related work to get an understanding of the field. The insights gained from the empirical study define problems in the design process, from the interviews and survey. In the design process methods that are used to create ideas are presented as well as the result. The design process presents nine concepts as a solution to the research question. The conclusion and discussion present new ideas and thoughts on how the project might have been taken in a different design approach and exploration.

Filial imprinting is a type of early developmental learning in which certain species buildstrong and mostly irreversible connections to objects or individuals. These connections couldbe shaped by the contribution of several stimuli including the fragments of auditory and visual components. This study aims to describe the duration of the imprinting process as well asestimate long-term behavioural changes in chicks. In this experiment, a total of 78 chicks were used out of which 39 were exposed to imprinting stimuli and the rest served as control.We applied three different tests and replicated them after the imprinting procedure. These tests are Imprinting Preference Test, Social Preference Test and Social isolation Test. Imprinted chicks had a constantly shorter latency to approach the imprinting stimuli for boththose two experiments with or without novel objects, whereas no preferences spent time inimprinting stimuli. However, introducing a novel object affected imprinting preferences more in terms of spending a longer time around the hen zone. During social isolation, the control group showed a relatively higher rate of distress calls even though our results don’t bear on the significant effect of filial imprinting on changes in distress calling. Overall, this study suggests the presence of long-lasting filial imprinting that is more triggered by external situations.

Loneliness is increasingly understood as a significant physical and mental health concern in modern society. Yet studies of the subject typically characterise it as resulting entirely from subjective individual characteristics and circumstances. The impact of broader living environments is understudied, leaving disciplines such as urban planning with little guidance as to how environmental intervention strategies might best ameliorate loneliness. This paper uses Stockholm as a case study for asking two place-based questions: (1) what can our knowledge of loneliness risk factors tell us about the possible spatial distribution of loneliness in cities? (2) what influence does the built environment itself have on loneliness? An abductive approach is used to test different ways in which urban planners might map risk of loneliness and social isolation in different neighbourhoods. The results shed light on spatial segregation as a potential contributing factor, with implications for planning practice.

In a study of the experiences of loneliness and social isolation of postsecondary undergraduate students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, 7 students with disabilities participated in phenomenological interviews to express their experiences during the pandemic. Interview data provided insight into the lived experiences of participants during the COVID-19 pandemic. Responses were analyzed using a descriptive phenomenological approach, resulting in 4 meta themes and 10 themes. Findings were discussed in relation to the developmental period of emerging adulthood and a new model for sustainable mental health proposed by Bohlmeijer and Westerhof (2021). Recommendations for the postsecondary institution attended by the participants are also discussed. / Graduate

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Bakgrund: Livslängden i världen ökar kontinuerligt och även den äldre populationen. Covid-19 pandemin innebar stor påverkan på samhället och restriktioner, bland annat social isolering, infördes för att begränsa smittspridningen. Dessa restriktioner riktades främst mot riskgrupper vilket innebar begränsningar i deras livsstil. Teorin känslan av sammanhang kan användas inom vården för att belysa vikten av sammanhang hos äldre och hur det påverkar välbefinnandet.Syfte: Att belysa hur äldre personer i enskilt boende upplevde den sociala isoleringen under covid-19 pandemin.  Metod: En kvalitativ litteraturöversikt genomfördes med induktiv ansats. Totalt 10 kvalitetsgranskade artiklar analyserades enligt Fribergs fem steg.Resultat: Det framkom två övergripande kategorier ”påverkan av emotionellt mående” med underkategorierna ”rädsla att insjukna”, ”isolering”, ”ekonomiska oro” och ”tankar om framtiden” samt ”socialt nätverks betydelse” med underkategorierna ”förändring av platsen i samhället”, ”påverkan av sociala interaktioner”, ”teknologins betydelse” och ”inverkan på vården”.Slutsats: Deltagarna upplevde bristande sociala kontakter, ensamhet, stigmatisering, problematik med teknik och rädsla för att drabbas av sjukdom vilket lett till minskat välbefinnande. Det framkom också att äldre besitter hög personlig styrka för att hantera motgångar vilket bidragit till att de till och med kunnat ta med sig något gott från den social isoleringen. / Background: Life expectancy and the elderly population in the world is increasing. The covid-19 pandemic had a major impact on society and restrictions, including social isolation, were established to limit the spread of infection. The theory sense of coherence can be used within the care of elderly to improve their wellbeing.Aim: To shed light on how community-dwelling older persons experienced the social isolation during the covid-19 pandemic.Method: A qualitative literature review with inductive approach was made. 10 articles were analyzed using Friberg's five steps.Results: Two overarching categories emerged: "impact of emotional well-being" with subcategories: "fear of become ill", "isolation", "financial worries" and "thoughts about the future" and "social networks importance" with subcategories: "change of place in society", "impact of social interactions”, “importance of technology” and “impact on care”.Conclusion: The participants experienced a lack of social contacts, loneliness, stigmatization, problems with technology and fear of illness which led to reduced well-being. It also emerged that the elderly possesses high personal strength to deal with setbacks, which contributed them to be able to take some benefits from the social isolation.

This report was the result of a study conducted in Stockholm County in Sweden. This study aimed to gain further understanding of how social workers working with domestic violence issues perceived how the COVID-19 pandemic affected women who are victims of domestic violence in Sweden. Three social workers working with victims of domestic violence were interviewed using semi structured questions. The sample consisted of two respondents from social services and one respondent from a women'sshelter. Their clients are women from the age of 18 and above with different cultural backgrounds. The results generated from the interview were analysed using feminist theory and earlier research conducted on domestic violence. Though domestic violence against women has been a social problem before the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings revealed the different factors that led to more cases of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic such as economic dependency on the perpetrator, depression,alcohol abuse, and social isolation due to the partial lockdown. These factors cause the women (victims) to be more vulnerable to the crime perpetrated by their partners, and due to partial lockdown and the stay-at-home order by the government to combat the spread of COVID-19 virus in Sweden, the social workers believed that the women (the victims) were stuck with their perpetrators and unable to come out to seek the help needed and this made their situation more vulnerable resulting to long life effects like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD), suicidal thoughts and even death.