Link workers' and clients' perspectives on how social prescribing offers a social cure for loneliness

Hayes, S, Sharman, L, McNamara, N ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3123-3678 and Dingle, G, 2024. Link workers' and clients' perspectives on how social prescribing offers a social cure for loneliness. Journal of Health Psychology. ISSN 1359-1053

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Abstract

Social prescribing is a healthcare model designed to reduce loneliness and improve individuals’ health by addressing unmet social needs. The present study adopted the Social Cure framework to provide an understanding of the psychosocial processes involved in helping participants to engage with social activities, from both the link workers’ and clients’ perspectives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 link workers (Mage = 40.12; 87% female) and 15 clients (Mage = 55.33; 73% female, 7% non-binary) of social prescribing programmes across Australia and the transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three overarching themes were identified: (1) Breaking Down Barriers, (2) Finding Fit with Others, and (3) Rebuilding a Sense of Self. These findings communicate how social prescribing addressed the psychosocial barriers of clients, and how joining groups that fostered positive shared social identities resulted in meaningful improvements to clients’ well-being.

Item Type:	Journal article
Alternative Title:	Social cure perspectives on social prescribing
Publication Title:	Journal of Health Psychology
Creators:	Hayes, S., Sharman, L., McNamara, N. and Dingle, G.
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Date:	22 August 2024
ISSN:	1359-1053
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1177/13591053241274090 DOI 2191887 Other
Rights:	© the author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	13 Aug 2024 08:12
Last Modified:	27 Aug 2024 14:49
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/51976

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