Solitary Symptoms: Loneliness Can Take A Toll On Physical & Mental Health

Earlier this year, we reported on the growing evidence that loneliness is not only a deeply subjective feeling of being unsatisfied with, or unfulfilled by, the relationships in your life, but that it can have deeper implications for your physical and mental health. You may remember that in another previous agebuzz post on healthy aging, we cited the recently released US News Healthy Aging survey, which underscored the importance of social engagement and healthy relationships to support healthy aging. In that survey, experts called out loneliness as the single biggest blind spot when it comes to healthy aging. Now, new evidence of the greater impact of loneliness on health continues to build, with several new studies reporting that feelings of loneliness can have serious consequences for your physical and mental well-being.

In a major study of over 270,000 participants, ages 40-69,  whose data were collected as part of the UK Biobank, researchers found that feelings of loneliness can erase up to 6 years of healthy aging and disease-free living, especially when it comes to mental health implications such as depression and anxiety, with men being a bit more susceptible to the mental health effects of loneliness. Women were reported to have lost up to 4 years of mental health disease-free living as a result of loneliness. For more on this important study, click here. Harvard Health also highlighted a recent analysis in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that reports that older adults who feel lonely are more likely to develop thinking and memory problems and experience premature death as well. As the Harvard article made clear, “Feeling lonely was consistently linked to worsening cognitive health and a shorter life, even after accounting for social isolation.”

Another study on the health effects of loneliness, also published in Nature Communications, found that loneliness may not only contribute to a higher risk for depression, but it may also increase the risk of a suicide attempt. Given the significance of loneliness among all populations, including older adults, and the high levels of suicide among seniors, especially older men, this research underscores the serious implications of loneliness, along with social isolation. It’s also the case that these connections between loneliness and mental health can be bidirectional: that is, the experience of depression or anxiety can heighten feelings of loneliness. In essence, feelings of loneliness can make you feel worse about yourself, making it harder to find or create relationships that might ease your distress. It becomes, as one psychologist has called it, a complex vicious cycle whereby it becomes easy to get stuck in a rut from which you can’t readily emerge.

There appear to be lots of potential opportunities- and entrepreneurs- interested in “solving” the loneliness epidemic, or at least making money off the number of adults, including older adults, suffering from loneliness. A recent article in Vox reported on the companies hoping to capitalize on what is called “the loneliness economy” by creating technology-driven shortcuts to speed up social engagement and make connections, albeit not always lasting connections. But most experts on relationships, social connection, and loneliness warn that technology-driven solutions can potentially make things worse, not better, as real and meaningful connections that can dispel feelings of loneliness often require “time, effort, and vulnerability,” something that technology solutions are often trying to bypass. 

There is some upbeat evidence that good old-fashioned phone calls can make a measurable difference in the lives of lonely adults. A recent study reported in the journal Applied Developmental Science described a “friendly-caller program” connecting undergraduate students with older adults through weekly phone chats. The study reported a significant decrease in feelings of loneliness among older adults in the program, along with a decrease in depressive symptoms, and a feeling of overwhelming positivity about the program (student participants were also very positive about the program). These sorts of friendly caller programs exist in the real world, not just in research studies, so that you or a loved one may wish to sign up and be the recipient of such a call. Dorot, based in New York City, has a program called Caring Calls, which is open to anyone 60+ in the US who can sign up for a weekly 30-minute phone chat with the same volunteer each week. There is also an organization called All Thrive 365, which has a Friendly Callers program, offering a friendly volunteer to conduct 15-20 minute weekly calls to an older adult who is feeling lonely. So it could be that the old-fashioned Bell Telephone “Reach out and Touch” commercials provide a template for helping today’s lonely older adults.