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Cyndi Sarnoff-Ross is a licensed psychotherapist with almost twenty years of clinical experience in the fields of clinical psychology and organizational management br br She has worked extensively with a wide variety of…
FAST FACTS
Loneliness is such a pervasive emotion among human beings that scientists have begun to look at the actual effects of loneliness on the brain. It has been determined that when people are socially isolated it affects not only how they behave, which seems obvious, but how their brains actually work. The very fact of being lonely has some control over the individual's response to external stimuli.
MRI scans of the brain were used in some studies and revealed that when someone reports being lonely their brain scans look different from those of non-lonely individuals when shown pictures of happy people. Parts of the brain become activated or remain dormant during these studies to help differentiate stimulus response. The part of the brain they are focused on is called the ventral straitum and is crucial to learning. It is activated by things like food and financial rewards and can even respond to positive social interactions and feelings of love.
Everyone has had some experience with the feeling of being lonely even if only fleeting, but anyone who has experienced profound loneliness knows how painful and often hopeless it can feel. What science has offered is actual evidence that these feelings can be detrimental to one's health and one report cites the effects as being as harmful as smoking to an individual's overall well being.
Since just around 1 in 5 Americans suffer from this type of loneliness it is clearly worth some exploration into both the causes and the effects of this emotion. Why is it that some people are able to reach out to others in the face of that feeling and thereby stave off the negative effects of social isolation while others retreat further into themselves and cut off the very thing that may alleviate the pain? We know some of this behavior is a function of depression and some of it is due to social skills or learned behavior.
No matter what the cause, it is critical that clinicians encourage their patients not to isolate themselves and to help people find ways, and learn skills to connect with others. This may mean getting their otherwise isolated patients into a group setting or helping them to compile a list, no matter how short, of people they can touch base with when they are feeling particularly lonely. While isolating is a symptom of many other mental health conditions, as the studies have shown, it can also be a cause on its own accord of mental and physical suffering.
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Agoraphobia & Social Anxiety
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Anxiety
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Bereavement
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Breakups & Divorce
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Caring For Aging Parents
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Depression
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Depression - Teen
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Depression in Children
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Depression Supporters
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Family Issues
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Life After Divorce
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Loneliness
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Parenting Newborns & Infants (0-1)
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Post Partum Depression
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Pre-menstrual Syndrome (PMS)
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Seasonal Affective Disorder
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And.....it's harder to reach out as you get older; you're afraid of rejection or of upsetting your own daily routine with 'strangers'.
Pets are helpful, very helpful.
I love the notion of older people who are able, adopting older dogs. Not only for the company, but for the socialization. You have to walk a dog. At the least, it gets you outside; even better - you meet up with other like minded pet owners=== and who knows ---- friendships could result.
But the issue of isolation and loneliness in older people merits urgent study and action!
And.....it's harder to reach out as you get older; you're afraid of rejection or of upsetting your own daily routine with 'strangers'.
Pets are helpful, very helpful.
I love the notion of older people who are able, adopting older dogs. Not only for the company, but for the socialization. You have to walk a dog. At the least, it gets you outside; even better - you meet up with other like minded pet owners=== and who knows ---- friendships could result.
But the issue of isolation and loneliness in older people merits urgent study and action!
again, very good article!
So I'm mostly alone with my cats.
Why don't they do studies like this in England? How can this article help to alleviate loneliness? It would be great if a cure for this could be found. God, I make it sound like a disease. In some ways I wish it was, then I - and others like me - could go to the doctors for a remedy.
Brilliant article, keep up the good work.
Good article.