Loneliness is a social cancer. It's as worrisome as cancer itself!

December 6, 2019 / biourn / -- ABC's "Australia dialogue" project aims to stimulate people's dialogue on a wide range of topics, from work safety and sexual habits to national pride and personal finance The project is based on the results of a representative survey of more than 50000 Australian people One of the questions that ABC's campaign materials focus on is "are you alone?" Asked by ITA buttrose, ABC president, what was the most surprising and disturbing feature of the exercise, she picked out data on loneliness Is loneliness worth it? This may be as important as climate change, economics or education, and the results of Australia's dialogue survey may help explain why, according to the researchers Photo source: North Carolina Health News: loneliness is harmful to health First of all, loneliness may be a killer In an influential meta-analysis, researchers collated and analyzed the results of nearly 150 studies, emphasizing the impact of loneliness on health, more specifically, the impact of lack of social integration and social support on individual health Some studies have found that compared with factors such as bad diet, obesity, drinking and lack of exercise, loneliness increases the risk of death, and its harm is no less than a large number of smoking People don't know that loneliness is harmful to their health Secondly, most people don't know that loneliness is harmful to their health Researchers found that when people in Britain and the United States were asked to rank the importance of various factors to their health, they would rank the importance of social integration and social support at the top of the list However, in a forthcoming study, researchers found that the quality of social relations, as an indicator of retirees' physical and mental health, is about four times more important than the financial status of the population However, when was the last time you saw an ad on TV telling you to live in order (not a pension plan) before you stop working? And when did the last health campaign or your GP warn you of the danger of loneliness? Our ignorance of the impact of loneliness on health reflects the fact that loneliness is not part of our daily conversation about health The most striking finding from the national survey of dialogue in Australia is the widespread loneliness of the Australian people In fact, only 54% of the participants said that they seldom or never felt lonely A recent survey also found that loneliness may be a particular challenge for a particular part of the community, with four groups of people particularly prominent 1 Young people in the 18-24-year-old population, 32% of the people rarely or never feel lonely, more than a quarter (30%) of the people will say that they often or always feel lonely; in contrast to the situation of the elderly, two thirds (71%) of them "rarely" or "never" feel lonely Photo source: Wikipedia 2 Urban residents may be a special problem for people living in the city center; compared with people living in rural areas, people in inner cities are less likely to say they are "never" lonely (15% vs 20%), but more likely to say they are "occasionally", "often" Or "always" (50% to 42%) This may run counter to most of the discussion about loneliness, which usually focuses on the plight of people who are far away from other people's bodies But it illustrates the psychological reality of loneliness, as we pointed out in our recent book "new psychology of health", that people's health and well-being are closely related to their connection with various forms of groups and communities and the strength of their identity 3 Interestingly for the country's voters, the third group with a high level of loneliness is the country's voters Nearly one tenth (9%) of the followers of Pauline Hanson (Pauline Hanson), an Australian female politician, said they were "always" lonely, while only about 2% of the followers of other parties The researchers believe that feeling out of touch with the world and its institutions often prompts people to seek consolation in marginal political movements, which is indeed the development track of various forms of extremism 4 Perhaps the most serious finding for low-income people is related to a fourth predictor of loneliness: poverty 21% of those earning less than $600 a week are "often" or "always" lonely, while less than half (10%) of those earning more than $3000 a week are lonely This illustrates a more general (but often overlooked) fact that poverty is one of the biggest predictors of poor health around the world, particularly depression and other mental disorders This may also confirm researchers' observation that if you are lucky enough to have a lot of money when you retire, one of the key things you can do is maintain and build social relationships What can we do about loneliness? So, when it comes to loneliness, we may have a lot to talk about, and we need to do something to deal with social cancer that is as worrisome as cancer itself For us, a large part of the answer lies in the efforts to rebuild group based social relations, which have been eroded by the tyranny of modern life; in this world, all types of communities, such as families, political parties and trade unions, are always threatened So let's talk about how to deal with loneliness effectively! Reference materials: [1] s Alexander Haslam, Charlotte McMahon, tegan cruwys, et al Social curve, what social curve? The propensity to underestimate the importance of social factors for health ， Social Science & Medicine Volume 198， February 2018， Pages 14-21  doi：10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.020
【2】 The New Psychology of Health 【3】 Depression and Social Identity： An Integrative Review 【4】Stephen Reicher，S Alexander Haslam Rethinking the psychology of tyranny： The BBC prison study ， BJSP (2011) doi：10.1348/014466605X48998 【5】 Loneliness is a social cancer， every bit as alarming as cancer itself by alex Haslam， Catherine Haslam and Tegan Cruwys， The Conversation