There are many people around the world who enjoy being single, whereas there’s many who don’t. However, study shows that prolonged social alienation is even riskier than obesity.
Analysis of 218 studies shows that people with poor social life are 50% more at risk of death than those with good connections. Obesity increases the risk by 30%
Main author and professor at Brigham Young University, Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad said that social connection is an essential human need both for welfare and survival. Human contact is extremely important for us to thrive and so isolation is used as punishments in most nations.
The society is suffering extreme loneliness and so people should consider it a public health issue.
Since there is no direct medicine to cure one of loneliness, it makes the problem even more serious. This isn’t the first time such studies have been conducted. Granset conducted a survey of more than 50 social networking sites and figured out that more than 75 percent of the aged folks in UK experience loneliness. Moreover, it seems to be an uncommon practice to talk to people about their emotions and hardships. Most shy away from verbally acknowledging their feelings.
Holt-Lunstad said that recent researchers have found enough evidence to suggest that isolation and loneliness greatly increase the premature death rate.
It is far more dangerous and deadly than most serious health problems.
The world population is aging day by day and therefore it means that health issues and deaths will only increase. Social alienation will hugely impact the public health frontier. According to Holt-Lunstad, several nations all over the world have become aware that we are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic’. It is an extremely crucial time and it’s challenging to figure out how to tackle this growing crisis.
Having critically analyzed the studies and developments, Dr. Holt-Lunstad believes that the primary method to curb the growing problem is to encourage and emphasize upon intensive research and studies and also to find a new way and come up with new ideas to confront loneliness and isolation.
For example, a good start to solving the problem would be teaching children in school to express their feelings and emotions and talk about them whenever they want to. They should learn about ways to handle loneliness. Making them aware at a young age will definitely improve the situation considerably.
