Medical professionals have gone on record to say that social isolation and loneliness is responsible for 29 per cent of heart diseases and increases the risk of a stroke in a patient by about 39 per cent. If this is not reason enough for us to address loneliness as a public health issue, what will be?
loneliness a looming health epidemic (Photo Credit: Pixabay)
New Delhi: India is becoming a loneliness epicentre, warned WHO in January 2024. The problem is that this feeling of being lonely or very lonely is not restricted to adults only. In fact an online survey conducted in July, found that about 15 per cent Adults (over the age of 35) felt lonely while a larger section of the society, comprising youth and pre teens, found themselves in the lonely category. According to the survey, about 30 per cent identified as lonely in the 14-25 year age grouping. This is alarming.
Global standards reflect the same situation with over 1.25 billion people feeling lonely (in a global report released in 2023). Although WHO does considerably research on this possible public health emergency, doctors believe their reports could be an underestimate at best.
“This is so because, loneliness per se falls in such a grey area that it’s difficult to define or diagnose this health condition. Although, we have made strides in coming to terms with the public health issue, there is still much that is in the dark when it concerns the medical condition,” explains Dr Raghav, an infectious disease expert, from New Delhi.
Is loneliness a medical condition
The answer to this question is not a simple one. As Dr Raghav pointed out earlier, loneliness may manifest as a mental health conditions but it does have serious physiological consequences. The impact of feeling ‘lonely’ or ‘very lonely’ can be felt by the heart, brain, gut as well as hormones. It can result in debilitating concerns, even lessening mortality to a large extent.
Before going to problems associated with this condition, let’s describe what loneliness really means in medical parlance. It is a condition where you feel there is a gap between what your social connectedness should be and what it really is. Loneliness is a feeling of not being wanted or pursued. It shouldn’t be mistaken for another serious mental health issue, depression.
“There is a sea difference between the two,” says Dr Samir Parikh, a renowned mental health expert from Fortis. While depression is at the core of a person’s loneliness, the vice versa doesn’t hold. “It may sound similar and people often confuse loneliness as a subset of depression but these two are completely separate medical manifestations. A person can feel lonely and isolated from time to time but it may not be a pathological condition for many. Whereas depression has a different diagnosis,” Dr Parikh goes on.
He adds that while a person suffering from a stage of loneliness can find solace in the hope of meeting another person and letting go of the isolation on its own, the same cannot be told of depression.
In this supra interconnected world, where everyone is on social media, how does one still feel lonely? It is because the social world exists in vacuum and is virtual. You may find a sense of belonging but that exists only in the mind. Other functions of being lonely is not tended to. “Social media is not going to give you touch therapy. A person who is lonely would want all the senses to be connected,” says Dr Deepak Ahuja, a wellness coach in Bengaluru.
Dr Ahuja says it is a sense of individualism that is further fuelling the waning influence of social values. “Moving away from the joint family system to a more nuclear set up, broken families and single children in the households could also be prime reasons for more people going into this phase of loneliness,” says Dr Ahuja.
Health implications of feeling lonely?
While prognosis is the difficult part, experts say the solution to the problem is fairly easy. If there were tests to determine whether the patient was suffering from a general feeling of being lonely or it is in a hyper stage, then there are ways to deal with the symptoms efficiently. However, the real challenge is in understanding and differentiating between the symptoms of other such similar ailments.
However, doctors agree that loneliness is fast becoming an epidemic and may have completely populations in its throes if left unabated. “There is evidence that suggests, entire countries going into the severe phase of loneliness. We don’t want that to happen here,” says Dr Raghav and we agree wholeheartedly.
Cognitive issues may become rampant: If you don’t treat your lonely phase, it may lead to other serious mental health and brain health issues. People who are lonely find it easy to migrate to levels of depression, schizophrenia or even bipolar disorders quickly. The latter three conditions will require proper medical hypotheses. Cases of dementia and Alzheimer’s is also on the rise globally (it is also the case in India) which makes doctors wonder if loneliness may be directly connected to the disorder.
Heart health: Doctors have found evidence that links the feeling of being lonely can have an adverse impact on cardiac disease. “It can cause heart attacks or strokes in some patients who have shown symptoms of being lonely and disoriented,” explains Dr Raghav.
Diabetes, obesity and infections: Loneliness can play havoc with your eating cycle and sleep routines which in turn increases your risk of diabetes and hypertension. It can also lead to a lower immune response which may lead to increased cases of infections.
Bone health: Loneliness severely affects lifestyle choices by making people more restrained and vulnerable. Such patients may not have the urge to exercise often, may avoid outdoorsy activities altogether which can lead to other physiological problems starting with poor and brittle bones and other arthritis related issues.
It is indeed a condition that could affect the entire population in no time. Covid-19 pandemic has shown how social isolation can lead to irreparable health damage, across all age categories and demographies. To counter loneliness, every stakeholder, including government enterprises and officials, and patients themselves, need to come forward and seek help at the right time. Any delay could mean prolonged impact on one’s health and well being. We cannot afford another silent epidemic, can we?
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