A Deep Need to Bond

Loneliness is a serious public health issue that must be addressed all year round.  Loneliness affects 60 million Americans. In the age of Facebook and online connections, we are feeling more lonely than ever.  It’s an epidemic sweeping our nation, and wreaking havoc on Americans’ health.  Loneliness has been linked to the development of a number of serious chronic health conditions, including depression, high blood pressure and dementia.

Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents – all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone.  Studies have shown the following affects of loneliness:

• Loneliness increases the risk of early death by 45% and the chance of developing dementia in later life by 64%.

• Extreme loneliness can increase premature death in older adults by 14%.
• Loneliness has twice the impact on early death than obesity.
• Loneliness is a form of stress, causing an inflammatory response, which harms the blood vessels and heart.

 

Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find — the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe.  The organs in this illustration are affected by loneliness.