Feeling isolated, left out, and without a sense of belonging or connection to anyone around you — in other words, grappling with loneliness — can be a grim experience.
Science suggests these pangs for companionship aren’t just uncomfortable. Chronic loneliness can have significant effects on our physical and mental health.
“What’s so powerful about loneliness is it affects everything — every aspect of health and well-being,” says Angelina Sutin, PhD, a professor of psychology at Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee, who researches how personality and life events affect mental and physical outcomes. “This underscores the importance of social connection and being able to be part of a group.”
Loneliness is the emotional and cognitive discomfort or uneasiness of being or perceiving oneself to be alone — the distress we feel when our inherent needs for intimacy and connection aren’t met.
It can bubble up as either an objective or subjective state. You could be objectively alone and crave companionship, or you could be in a crowded room and still feel alone in the world, says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. For the past two decades, she’s been studying the protective effects of social relationships on health — and, in turn, the health risks associated with loneliness and isolation.
Limiting social interaction for months and years, for some, because of a global pandemic has been a stark reminder of the toll loneliness can take. In February 2021, Harvard University research reported that 36 percent of Americans said they felt “serious loneliness.”Another international study (for which Dr. Holt-Lunstad was a coauthor) included 101 countries and suggested approximately 21 percent of people experienced “severe” loneliness in 2020 (only 6 percent reported that level of loneliness before COVID-19).
The increasing number of people experiencing loneliness led to the release of a U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory in 2023, calling attention to loneliness as an urgent public health issue.
While nearly everyone experiences loneliness at some point, it’s chronic loneliness that wreaks havoc on our health. Here’s a look at seven ways loneliness affects our health and well-being.
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