1 week Ago By Jenny Tucker
The stats don’t lie. Loneliness is endemic in our society. According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK, around a quarter of adults (27%) report they have felt lonely always, often or some of the time.
Age UK reveals that nearly a million older people across the country say they repeatedly feel lonely, while 4.2 million people aged over 65 live alone. And that’s the ones we know about.
Data aside, what about those who fall under the research radar, living silently in loneliness? The numbers are likely to be far greater. The taboo around admitting feeling lonely gets in our way. No wonder people are reluctant to acknowledge it, especially when ugly terms like “sad loner” evoke connotations of desolation and rejection.
Few of us find it easy to own up to being in need, and if loneliness has already eroded our confidence, admission is an intimidating hurdle. And so we bury ourselves in our devices, we watch families move away to the other side of the world, we work from home in seclusion, we remain blind to the fact that social media provides contact but not real connection, and we keep quiet. But silence is deadly.
Mounting research reveals that loneliness can be extremely detrimental to our mental and physical health, causing depression and overwhelm, and increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke, Parkinson’s and dementia . James Baker, 28, found himself in a difficult place after a sequence of events changed his life. “It was like a perfect storm,” he says.
“My best friend moved to Australia, two other friends had babies and stopped socialising, then I broke up with my girlfriend of four years. I felt so detached from everything and caught in a spiral of misery. For months, I fell into a pit of isolation.
I had no desire to do anything other than watch endless rubbish television and eat awful food. I put on weight, which made me feel worse, and I hated myself for being so lethargic..
