Loneliness is a national crisis. But there is a way to tackle it

Imagine there was a virus you’d never heard of which increased the likelihood of mortality by 26%, or a condition which had a death rate comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. A national health crisis would be declared, and judging by the reaction to the coronavirus, panic would ensue. This public health crisis, which leaves its victims more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s and other dementias, has a name: loneliness. More than 2 million adults suffer from chronic loneliness; and although its most severe form is more prevalent among Britain’s oldest citizens, younger adults report loneliness more than any other age group. A desire for social connection is fundamentally hardwired into our psychology, and so being deprived of it has devastating mental and physical consequences. Yet we live in a society which has become ever more fragmented and atomised. This coincides with the decline of Britain’s industrial era. Though this period was male-dominated, and the work often physically damaging, whole communities were based around mines, docks and factories. Call centres, supermarkets, office blocks and zero-hours work do not provide the same social connections. Indeed, in that era the problem was often the opposite of loneliness: of claustrophobia,… Read full this story

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