Loneliness acts as a fertilizer for other diseases,” Dr. “The biology of loneliness can accelerate the buildup of plaque in arteries, help cancer cells grow and spread, and promote inflammation in the brain leading to Alzheimer’s disease. Loneliness promotes several different types of wear and tear on the body. Having studied loneliness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, I am concerned that weighing damage from prolonged isolation on one hand with the risks of Covid-19 on the other is a. Define loneliness. Loneliness synonyms, loneliness pronunciation, loneliness translation, English dictionary definition of loneliness. Lonelier, loneliest 1. Dejected by the awareness of being alone. See Synonyms at alone. Producing such dejection: the loneliest night of the. Loneliness, which is to be covered extensively in this volume, will only be summarized here.It involves excruciating physical, as well as mental, suffering. In fact, the first negative thing that the biblical God named was the experience of loneliness which has been shown to be related to numerous somatic, psychosomatic, and emotional phenomena and disturbances (Martens & Palermo, 2005; McGraw. Loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one’s desires for social connection and actual experiences of it.
Can a physician write a prescription for friendship?
Joanne Roe is 81 years old and has lived in the same three-bedroom house in Southern California for 60 years. The house is where she and her late husband, Kenneth, raised nine children. Roe fondly remembers stepping over futons and mattresses to get to the front door and being a part of lively dinners filled with conversation and camaraderie.
“We would have discussions about how they were doing in school and their friends,” she recalls.
Today, the only conversations Joanne hears are between detectives Briscoe and Curtis. “I’m a Law and Order junkie,” she says. “I’ve got the TV on 24/7. I can tell you what the next comment is going to be out of somebody’s mouth, I’ve seen the episodes so many times.”
Roe suffers from an array of physical ailments, including neuropathy in her left foot and chronic back pain. Though she does light housework and cooks for herself, she’s been largely sedentary since she had a stroke three years ago. All day, every day, she sits in her brown easy chair, listening to the fictional detectives, judges, and public defenders while she pores over adult coloring books.
“I get up. Take my pills. Have my breakfast. Sit in my recliner 90 percent of the day coloring,” she says.
“My life is inside four walls.”
Roe may be alone inside those four walls, but when it comes to the painstaking loneliness she confronts on a daily basis, she has plenty of company. What’s more, a growing number of health care providers and delivery systems have begun to understand such loneliness as more than an abstract idea; rather, it is a condition with an undeniable negative effect on health.
A groundbreaking study in the July 2012 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine found that 43 percent of older adult participants reported feelings of loneliness. That study further indicated that people 60 years and older who reported struggling with loneliness faced an increased risk of mortality compared with participants who do not report being lonely (22.8 percent versus 14.2 percent).
Since then, research conducted among Medicare and Medicaid patients served by CareMore Health, the organization in which I work, has bolstered the idea that loneliness can negatively affect one’s health. Our internal research shows that lonely patients are less likely to take their medications or show up for appointments—behaviors that usually result in chronic conditions going untreated and worsening over time. Similarly, a research perspective published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedias in 2017 by a behavioral medicine researcher at St. George’s, University of London, concluded that people who feel lonely are more likely to suffer from coronary artery disease, declines in motor function, frailty, and other physical and cognitive function conditions.
The increase in loneliness and its attendant health risks has not gone unnoticed in nonmedical sectors. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2017 on work and loneliness, physician and former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy noted, “During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness.” Noting that rates of loneliness in the United States have doubled since the 1980s, Murthy called the condition “a growing health epidemic” and pointed to research showing that “loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than that associated with obesity.”
Given that the deleterious effects of loneliness are being recognized and identified, what is to be done? I don’t know of any physician who can write out a prescription for friendship. Moreover, the root causes of loneliness often are cultural in nature. In Roe’s situation, her children are scattered in communities around the country.
“I don’t have a circle of friends because Ken and my work were my life,” she explains matter-of-factly. “We didn’t need anybody except each other.”
Several new initiatives, however, suggest paths that can help patients like Roe become less lonely while improving their health. In 2017, CareMore Health appointed a chief togetherness officer to oversee our efforts to address loneliness and isolation among the senior population that we treat. An initiative we launched, the Togetherness Program, assessed our patient base of more than 80,000 patients and identified 2,000 lonely seniors—more than 700 of whom elected to participate in the program and are enrolled in an intensive intervention that includes weekly phone calls, home visits, encouragement, and connection to community-based programs.
For example, twice a week Roe gets a call from a volunteer with the program. Those calls, says Roe, are the high point of her days. “You don’t know how that feels unless you’ve been alone without anyone to talk to, she says. “And then you have somebody that doesn’t know you from Adam call and make you feel like you’re important. It just brings joy. It makes me feel that I have a friend.”
The value of such initiatives was further underscored when, after a 2017 report showed that more than nine million people in Britain often or always feel lonely, Prime Minister Theresa May appointed that country’s first Minister for Loneliness who is tasked with developing programs to increase social connectedness among the country’s people. In June of this year, the May government announced £20 million in funding to help isolated people and those suffering from loneliness. Much of those funds will go toward community programs like Shared Lives, a home-sharing program that matches pensioners struggling with loneliness with young people needing somewhere to live, and Men’s Sheds, communal spots where retirees and unemployed men can come together to socialize and participate in activities like woodworking and electronics repair.
Back in Southern California, if you ask Roe about her health, she’ll tell you, “I’m basically in good health. I don’t have any serious medical problems.” A newcomer looking at her chart might disagree. But she says that despite the back pain, the neuropathy, the bladder infection, the creaking knees, and the carpal tunnel in her left hand, the twice-weekly calls she receives from the CareMore Health volunteer “picks up my mood and makes me happy. And when you’re happy, you’re not bawling your eyes out.”
Sometimes, as clinicians, we’re baffled by a patient’s symptoms. Yet, Roe’s words remind us that those of us in the health care community not only should treat loneliness as a clinical condition, we must.
Sachin H. Jain, MD ’06, is an adjunct professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and president and CEO of the CareMore Health System, a health care delivery organization.
By Chloe Jones | Special for Cronkite News | –
PHOENIX – The pandemic has affected different people in different ways, causing financial stress due to job loss, sliding grades, relationship pressures and worries that vulnerable loved ones could contract COVID-19.
But one factor that has affected Americans across the country is the loss of social connectedness. Even before the pandemic shuttered schools, restaurants and workplaces last spring, an estimated 3 in 5 Americans reported a growing sense of loneliness, according to Cigna’s 2020 Loneliness Index. Roughly 73% of those surveyed said they sometimes or always feel alone, up from 69% in the previous year.
But since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March, clinicians fear that number is increasing.
In his Stay Home, Stay Healthy, Stay Connected order in March, Gov. Doug Ducey encouraged Arizonans to share awareness and resources in their communities regarding suicide prevention. The initiative acknowledged a leading theory in behavioral science that lays out two assumptions about when people become suicidal: a desire for belongingness that is not met, and a feeling of being a burden on those around them.
Both of these feelings, clinicians say, can be amplified under the stressors that come with COVID-19, especially for young people. In fact, adults ages 22 to 29 “are at high risk for increases in loneliness and mental health,” according to a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in October 2020. The study linked those factors to increases in depression and anxiety, and it cautioned of potential latent effects.
“Negative behavioral health impacts from pandemic are expected to peak up to nine months after the initial outbreak,” it found.
School closures
In mid-March, Ducey and Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman closed schools for two weeks. Most schools were on spring break at the time, and students were crossing their fingers that the shutdowns would be short-lived. But school closures extended through the end of the school year and classes resumed online.
Learn More
More than 25 television stations on Jan. 12 will air a half-hour, commercial-free student-produced documentary about youth suicide in Arizona and what can be done prevent it. The program will air at 5 p.m. on Spanish-language stations and at 6:30 p.m. on English-language stations. Find more information here.
Graduations, proms and other key events in most teens’ social lives were either postponed or canceled. But those aren’t the only things kids missed out on.
“Going to class, for example, isn’t just walking in a room, sitting down, listening to the lecture and leaving,” said Nadine Kaslow, chief psychiatrist with the Grady Health System in Atlanta. “It’s hanging out with people beforehand, hanging out with them afterwards, a lot of the informal kind of social connecting that’s much harder to do right now.”
The loss of these small interactions can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and potentially place someone at increased risk of suicide, Kaslow said. Youth heavily involved in extracurriculars can be particularly vulnerable to this.
The desire to belong
The pressure to “fit in” among youths can be a stressor during normal times, and social distancing guidelines that restrict activities where kids interact and forge bonds can heighten that effect, increasing feelings of despair, Kaslow said.
On the other hand, she noted, kids who are socially anxious or feel like they didn’t belong in a social circle may actually be doing better, because these guidelines take away the pressure of fitting in.
Loneliness Effects On Health
“They don’t feel so alone in this,” Kaslow said, “so it’s more normalized for many people.”
Burdens and routines
Dr. Elizabeth McKenna, a pediatrician at Healing Hearts Pediatrics in Chandler, said she has seen an uptick in children struggling with mental health, particularly anxiety, since the pandemic began.
In a state-funded program, she and other doctors at Healing Hearts, a pediatric primary care facility and network of providers, assess the mental health of patients at the beginning of each visit. She said it has helped staff members connect kids to the support they need, especially those whose mental health symptoms may not be obvious.
People with anxiety typically cope by sticking to a normal routine, McKenna said. When school is closed and kids are in their homes all day, this normal routine is interrupted and existing anxiety and depression can increase.
McKenna said some of her school-age patients worry that COVID-19 will kill the entire world’s population, along with their families.
“Parents bring home all their worry, and then that goes to the kids,” she said.
Loneliness Meaning
Many parents don’t realize how their emotions can transfer to their children, who are likely not as equipped to handle them, McKenna said.
Sometimes, when children interpret negative feelings from others, they begin to feel they’re a burden, and that the people around them would be better off if they were gone.
Chris Segrin, a behavioral scientist who teaches at the University of Arizona, said this feeling of being a burden is a huge risk factor when it comes to suicide. But sometimes, he added, all it takes is one comment from one person to momentarily change someone’s thoughts about it suicide.
But mental health during the pandemic is dependent on the support system a person is isolating with, Segrin said. Negative experiences in strained relationships can intensify, but there is also an opportunity for the relationship to heal with the extra time together and positive experiences can intensify in blissful relationships, or the extra time together can add stress.
Keeping connected
Learn More
Subscriptions to Zoom and other video chat applications are spiking, and such smartphone apps as House Party bring a game night into the online world. And some young people are rediscovering traditional methods of connectedness.
Signs You're Lonely
Xavier Valdez, a senior at Hamilton High School in Chandler, said he has been connecting with his friends on the Google Chrome extension Teleplay (formerly Netflix Party) for virtual movie nights.
Jessica Wastchak, a junior at Hamilton, said she and her friends have been writing and mailing each other handwritten letters.
“As human beings, we are essentially social creatures,” Segrin said. “It is literally in our DNA to connect with other people during times of stress.”
Online school isn’t the same as in-person school. FaceTime isn’t the same as face-to-face. And a virtual hug isn’t the same as actually feeling the wrap of an embrace. But clinicians urge solidarity in these universally trying times.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline also offers free and confidential support at 1-800-273-8255.
Via Cronkite News
Featured image: J.D. Hancock, Creative Commons.