Loneliness can sneak up on people. Bill VanGorder, 80, sees it all the time.
During the pandemic, a weekly breakfast with friends over Zoom was one of his close friend’s only sources of social interaction.
“[He] said ‘I don’t know what I would have done without these… it has made all the difference,’” said VanGorder, who is chief operating officer and chief policy officer at the Canadian Association for Retired Persons (CARP), a national advocacy group.
VanGorder knows loneliness can bring on major physical and mental health problems. “[Loneliness] leads to poor mental health [which] is often the precursor to physical health issues.”
Nearly a third of seniors are at risk of being socially isolated, according to the Canadian Coalition for Seniors Mental Health. Almost a quarter of people aged 15 to 24 said they always or often felt lonely.
And help is not on the way. Canada lacks country-wide initiatives to help people who are struggling with loneliness. Experts say loneliness is under-studied, which makes interventions or political solutions difficult to put in place.
Need to feel needed
During Covid, many community centres and churches that once brought seniors together shut down and many never opened again, says VanGorder.
VanGorder says seniors are less likely to reach out for help because they don’t know how to email or search for help online. If their mental health is deteriorating, they may also be less likely to try.
“If you’re already in a state where mentally you’re feeling a sense of isolation, you’re not the kind of person who’s going to proactively go out and call other people.”
Social isolation and loneliness can lead to health problems in seniors, such as stroke or dementia and even premature death, according to the National Institute on Aging. Medical research has found the increased risk of death from these causes is similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being obese.
The UK and US have recognized loneliness as a growing health care issue, with the UK creating a minister of loneliness in 2018 to deal with the rise in senior isolation. This year, the US Surgeon General released a report on the harmful effects of loneliness and isolation, calling for a national strategy to tackle the issue.
But it’s a lesser studied problem globally, making it challenging to create effective solutions to combat it, says Kimberly Brownlee, Canada Research Chair in ethics and political and social philosophy at the University of British Columbia.
People can experience loneliness either due to being socially isolated or by perceiving they are lonely. Measuring the quantity and quality of social contact a person regularly receives can help institutions understand how to help seniors connect better with others, says Brownlee.
To alleviate loneliness, Brownlee says, people need to be shown they are needed and valued. They also need public spaces to connect.
“There’s a lot of qualitative studies, interview-based studies that suggest that people who are chronically lonely [think that] no one needs them,” she says.
When someone shows “that they’re worthy of trust, that they can be a witness to someone else’s life, then they can have a true connection.”
In the UK, doctors can write “social prescriptions” to prescribe extracurricular classes. But a lack of public funding has limited this initiative there, says Brownlee.
Canada offers a tool kit for community groups to combat senior loneliness. This step-by-step guide includes templates on how to lead events aimed at decreasing loneliness in their community. But there is no federal initiative to address loneliness.
There are some initiatives at the local level. At CARP, seniors can take classes to learn how to use social media. Pre-pandemic, only 35 per cent of surveyed seniors used the internet for purposes other than email, says VanGorder. But 65 per cent are now familiar with social media and other online features or apps.
‘Impacts everything’
Unlike seniors, many young people have plenty of social connections but can still feel lonely. For most adolescents, feeling lonely is a completely normal and healthy part of growing up, says Pamela Qualter, professor of psychology at the University of Manchester and leading expert in adolescent loneliness.
“[Loneliness] is heightened because young people are trying to find their way in the world. So they’re trying on different identities,” says Qualter.
But when this feeling goes unresolved, children and young adults’ mental health may deteriorate, leading to depression, anxiety and even suicide.
“[Loneliness] feeds into all sorts of different things,” says Qualter. “The way you value yourself — so whether you are putting yourself out there for jobs — but also how you feel about yourself in relationship. It does impact everything.”
For people who experience long-term loneliness, she recommends cognitive behavioural therapy.
Schools should play a part in educating children about how to manage and regulate their negative emotions, she says. An example already in use in many schools is social emotional learning, where social and emotional skills are part of the curriculum.
But there’s still a lot of research to be done to find ways to prevent long-term loneliness, says Qualter. When she first began studying children’s loneliness 32 years ago, researchers in the field claimed minors couldn’t feel lonely because their cognitive capabilities weren’t fully developed.
Even today, studies in the field remain sparse, especially those that monitor a lonely individual over many years, she says.
“I think we’ve got a long way to go in the field because we need to change our measurements,” says Qualter. “[T]hat will determine what kind of interventions we design that are much more likely to be effective.”
Don’t want to say much now my husband died I was his caregiver he had dementia and COPD