We often associate the
loneliness to the negative feelings produced by isolation .

However, today we know that it can also have very negative material repercussions. In fact, the feeling of prolonged solitude can increase the risk of death by 26% , a percentage that increases to 32% in cases where social isolation is real. These are the data published by psychologists from Brigham Young University in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science .

Loneliness may increase the risk of death, according to one study

The study conducted by these researchers is
a meta-analysis of different research in the field of social psychology that aims to find relationships between loneliness (real and perceived) and mortality patterns. What they found is what seems to be a correlation between social isolation and the risk of death so marked that it can have repercussions on a large scale .

Furthermore, the results of the meta-analysis not only speak of an increased risk of death in those people who due to their habits have little contact with other people (i.e. they show cases of real social isolation) but the same happens in people who regardless of the number of real interactions with others and the time dedicated to them feel alone. Chronic loneliness, whether real or subjective, carries certain dangers.

That is why addressing this problem is more complicated than one might expect, since not only must we intervene on the amount of real interactions with others, but also on the
quality of these relationships .

Both the subjective and objective factors associated with loneliness can be affecting our health in various ways: producing episodes of stress, negatively affecting the functioning of the immune system, producing states of blood pressure that favour the appearance of inflammations, leading to negative social dynamics, etc. All these factors interact and feed back on each other, and that is why, although they do not have to result in the appearance of fatal accidents, they wear down the health of the organism , causing it to age earlier and all kinds of complications to appear.

Virtually all the benefits associated with a life full of fulfilling relationships can serve to give you an idea of the negative aspects of lack of physical and emotional contact with others.

Loneliness: a problem that spreads in the Western world

These conclusions are particularly worrying if we consider that in Western countries
there are more and more people living alone or without strong ties to any community . Furthermore, the new forms of communication through digital media do not encourage the emergence of sustained face-to-face relationships, and there are even new forms of work that do not require more company than a laptop and a drink.

Moreover, a large part of the population at risk of social isolation is precisely that in a more delicate state of health:
older people . These people may be at a point where the family lives very far away, contact with colleagues has been lost and there are hardly any social activities aimed at them.

Offering these older people (and ourselves) contexts in which to develop diverse social ties can be one of the fundamental keys to improving people’s health on a large scale and preventing certain fatal accidents from occurring. The result, moreover, would be the construction of a well-cohesioned society, with all the advantages that this entails.

Referencias bibliográficas:

  • Holdt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T. y Stephenson, D. (2015). Lonely and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), consultado en http://pps.sagepub.com/content/10/2/227.full.pdf