The Loneliness Epidemic

Is Social Isolation Making Americans Sick?

Americans are lonelier than ever before, and that may be a big reason why many Americans are sicker now than ever before.

The data leaves little room for an alternate interpretation, with one in three experiencing feelings of loneliness at least once a week, and one in ten feeling lonely every day of the week. So says the latest polling by the American Psychiatric Association.

What make this data concerning is research showing that a lonely heart is very often a diseased heart, based on a recently published meta-analysis in Nature Scientific Reports.

The review, published in Nature Scientific Reports, comes from a team of Saudi Arabian public health researchers who combined the data from six studies involving nearly 105,000 participants into a meta-analysis. They found that having poor social relationships (regular connections with family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers) was associated with a 16 percent increase in cardiovascular disease. Their analysis also found that older adults and retired people were more likely to experience social isolation and more likely to develop heart disease.

To be clear, the study¹ did not find that loneliness and social isolation caused cardiovascular disease per se. Rather, it identified loneliness and social isolation as an aggrevating factor—it makes underlying cardiac conditions worse.

Poor social health increases the risk of and worsens outcomes in incident cardiovascular diseases. However, the observed effect estimate is small, and this may be attributable to residual confounding from the incomplete measurement of potentially confounding or mediating factors.

While loneliness may not cause heart disease, the correlation is definite between loneliness and increased incidence of heart disease.

One study examined whether loneliness predicts cardiovascular and all-cause mortality in older men and women and reported that cardiovascular disease accounted for 59.2% of all deaths in the selected cohort. Across the remaining studies, 5,073 CVD events were reported, and the Hazard Ratio (HR) of new CVD when comparing high versus low loneliness or social isolation was 1.16 (95% CI 1.10 to 1.22; see Fig. 4). In another words the poor social relationships were associated with a 16% increase in risk of incident CVD (P < 0.0001). The large P-value for heterogeneity of 0.16 (> 0.05) and the l² of 36% both indicate that heterogeneity was not present. So we didn’t need to perform subgroup analyses according to risk of confounding and risk of bias due to outcome measurement error.

Heart disease is but the latest health problem correlated to social isolation and feelings of loneliness. Social isolation has been found to be positively correlated with increases in dementia² as well as compulsive/addictive internet usage among young people³.

As a direct consequence of these correlations, loneliness, while a mental health condition, is one that actually has physical symptoms even on a day-to-day basis. The research⁴ establishes that strong of a link between loneliness, social isolation, and physical ailments.

Loneliness is associated with physical health symptoms on a day-to-day basis, especially for people who are highly variable in loneliness. Considerations of multiple sources of variation in daily loneliness may be necessary to adequately address loneliness and promote health. Public health interventions addressing loneliness may be most effective if they support social connectedness in people's everyday lives in ways that promote stable, low levels of loneliness.

The research leaves little room for doubt or even debate on this point. To be lonely is to be sick, or at the very least less healthy.

Loneliness and social isolation are emerging in a variety of ways in people, underscoring that this is no small mental health concern. A recent poll by the APA shows Americans to be more anxious, feeling more stress, and getting less sleep.

When asked about a list of lifestyle factors potentially impacting mental health, adults most commonly say stress (53%) and sleep (40%) have the biggest impact on their mental health. Younger adults (18-34 years old) are more likely than older adults (50+) to say social connection has the biggest impact on their mental health. Despite the increasing anxiety, most adults have not sought professional mental health support. In 2024, just one in four (24%) adults say they talked with a mental health care professional in the past year. Notably, younger adults (18-34) are more than twice as likely as older adults (50+) to have done so.

These latest research findings are grimly very much in line with other studies showing confirming a steady decline in mental health in this country, and even in generational mental health.

Teach The New Dogs Old Tricks

What this data does reiterate is the role social support systems and strong interpersonal relationships play in sustaining one’s mental and emotional health. If people’s mental and emotional health is suffering, there is good reason to look to the state of their social interactions (or lack thereof) when looking for ways to mitigate the problems.

This data also underscores the need to continue to elevate conversations about mental health issues, and to constantly strive to destigmatize mental health concerns. It is a perverse and brutal irony if feelings of loneliness and social isolation become a recursive cause for continued loneliness and social isolation.

Given that the incidence of Childhood PTSD is on par with that of Combat PTSD in this country, it is clear that we absolutely must not be indifferent to people’s mental and emotional health challenges.

Childhood PTSD: The Other Side Of America's Mental Health Crisis

It takes no great leap of logic to surmise that challenges such as PTSD are a contributing factor to people experiencing loneliness and social isolation, and having not just their mental health but also their physical health suffering as direct consequence.

There are numerous mental health resources, free and otherwise, available in most metropolitan regions. My own city of San Antonio has an abundance of support groups as well as therapists. People who need professional care for their mental health have, in many regions, resources to assist them in getting that care.

Yet we should also be mindful that social support systems and interpersonal relationships are not the province of counsellors and therapists, but of ordinary individuals. Not only is talking the best treatment for most mental health challenges, but talking among friends—in having the reassurance and support of committed friendships—goes a long way towards improving everyone’s mental and emotional health.

It is important to understand that the best therapies for resolving PTSD involve talking. While friends and other members of a person’s support network are not clinically trained therapists, and cannot provide the structured talk therapies available in the clinical setting, everyone has the capacity to listen, everyone has the capacity to create a safe and nurturing space where people can discuss their inner turmoil, and people grappling with trauma especially need that safe and nurturing space in which to talk.

Anyone can make a difference in someone else’s life simply by reaching out a hand of friendship. Simply by being a friend, each of us has it within his or her power to directly confront the loneliness and social isolation that is complicating everyone’s overall health outlook.

These latest research findings reiterate what we truthfully have always known, and of which we should be constantly mindful: our communities and our society will do best if we focus on reaching out to those around us. We have the power to make people’s lives better, and to therefore make our communities better, just by reaching out a hand of friendship to someone who is in need.

Loneliness is on the rise in this country. That means mental health is on the decline—and that means that physical health is likewise on the decline. These latest research findings do not admit of any other conclusions.

Loneliness means people are suffering from a lack of friends. We have the power to change that. The data is telling us that we need to change that. We need to change that now.

1. Albasheer, O., Abdelwahab, S.I., Zaino, M.R. et al. The impact of social isolation and loneliness on cardiovascular disease risk factors: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and bibliometric investigation. Sci Rep 14, 12871 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-63528-4

2. Lara, Elvira et al. “Does loneliness contribute to mild cognitive impairment and dementia? A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies.” Ageing research reviews vol. 52 (2019): 7-16. doi:10.1016/j.arr.2019.03.002

3. Savolainen, Iina et al. “The Role of Perceived Loneliness in Youth Addictive Behaviors: Cross-National Survey Study.” JMIR mental health vol. 7,1 e14035. 2 Jan. 2020, doi:10.2196/14035

4. Witzel, Dakota D et al. “Loneliness dynamics and physical health symptomology among midlife adults in daily life.” Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association vol. 43,7 (2024): 528-538. doi:10.1037/hea0001377