Associations between recorded loneliness and adverse mental health outcomes among patients receiving mental healthcare in South London: a retrospective cohort study

Loneliness disproportionately affects people with mental disorders, but associations with mental health outcomes in groups affected remain less well understood. A cohort of patients receiving mental healthcare on 30th June 2012 was assembled from a large mental health records database covering a south London catchment area. Recorded loneliness within the preceding 2 years was extracted using natural language processing and outcomes were measured between 30th June 2012 until 30th December 2019, except for survival which applied a censoring point of 6th December 2020 according to data available at the time of extraction. The following mental healthcare outcomes: (i) time to first crisis episode; (ii) time to first emergency presentation; (iii) all-cause mortality; (iv) days active to service per year; and (v) face-to-face contacts per year. Loneliness was recorded in 4,483 (16.7