People on low incomes, who had disabilities or who were carers were less likely to recover quickly post-lockdown, study shows
“Everyone became withdrawn, even after restrictions ended,” one man said of his experience following Australia’s pandemic lockdowns.
“No one wants to hang out any more … [it] feels like life and society have permanently changed.”
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Continue reading...Strong social networks have been shown to improve wellbeing, but what are the extra perks of having a really close friend? And why are women more likely to have one?
“We met when we were five. I don’t know how I would have managed without her.” As children, Barbara Kastelein, from Ashford in Kent, and her best friend, nicknamed “Tulip”, both had alcoholic fathers. Their friendship was an escape from unhappy homes.
The best friends are now both 55 and their relationship is as solid as ever. Barbara says they are more like sisters – and still there for each other during tough times. When Barbara’s father died, Tulip drove for hours to be at the funeral and to help Barbara empty her father’s flat. “I can’t imagine life without her,” says Barbara. “She is my guardian angel.”
Continue reading...Loneliness is significant mental health concern and can raise risk of death by 45%, say scientists
Contact with nature in cities significantly reduces feelings of loneliness, according to a team of scientists.
Loneliness is a major public health concern, their research shows, and can raise a person’s risk of death by 45% – more than air pollution, obesity or alcohol abuse.
Continue reading...I had to choose between heating and eating – and ended up going to the library for warmth. There I was drawn into other worlds, bringing me much closer to other people
I have dealt with ostracism since early childhood. ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) do not benefit from confinement in a classroom, where bouncing off the walls is frowned upon. In other words, I was expelled from almost every school I attended. I even got kicked out of a special school, which I look back on as an achievement of sorts. Surely being expelled from a school for naughty kids for being a naughty kid deserves some kind of recognition?
But I was also excluded from home and bounced around foster placements and children’s homes like I was trapped in the world’s most depressing game of pinball. Inevitably, exclusion tends to make one feel excluded. Lonely may as well be my last name.
Continue reading...Each bag matches birth weight and features baby’s face, so new arrival can be hugged in pandemic
Parents in Japan are sending bags of rice that weigh the same as their newborn babies to relatives who are unable to visit them due to the pandemic.
The bags come in a wide range of designs, with some shaped like a baby wrapped in a blanket so that relatives can feel as though they are hugging the new arrival while looking at a picture of their face, which is attached to the front.
Continue reading...Staying in touch with friends and family via technology made many older people feel more lonely, research finds
Virtual contact during the pandemic made many over-60s feel lonelier and more depressed than no contact at all, new research has found.
Many older people stayed in touch with family and friends during lockdown using the phone, video calls, and other forms of virtual contact. Zoom choirs, online book clubs and virtual bedtime stories with grandchildren helped many stave off isolation.
Continue reading...Friendships can be difficult, and lockdowns have made them even harder to maintain. But we should cherish them
Almost every day for the past few months, I’ve told my husband I am lonely. Obviously I’m glad that he’s around. What I miss are my friends. In the first lockdown, we stayed in touch with Zoom dates, which were awkward, often drunk and occasionally very joyful. Those days are long gone. I’ve returned to texting, and though I’m often deep in four or five conversations at once, it isn’t the same as being together.
In the past year, there was a difficult bereavement in my family, and work has been harder than normal. None of these things are unique or insurmountable but the isolation has left me feeling almost capsized by anxiety and paranoia.
Continue reading...From a conversation about an orchid to a telephone buddy scheme, Guardian readers share their friendship tales
One of the biggest challenges of the pandemic has been keeping in touch with friends with social distancing and other Covid restrictions in place.
But for some these changes instigated unlikely friendships with people they might otherwise never have met. Five Guardian readers share how these friendships have helped them get through the past year.
Continue reading...In the pandemic, many have rediscovered the sheer pleasure of writing to strangers, with new schemes spreading hope and connection around the world
A few months ago, when the rules had been sufficiently relaxed to allow friends to sit together outside, Liz Maguire had coffee with a woman she had never met. The pair had already been communicating for months, and quickly fell into easy conversation. Later on, this woman tweeted about their meeting, to which another woman replied: “You met Liz Maguire? As in the Liz Maguire?”.
The Liz Maguire is a 27-year-old American expat living in Dublin. Though undoubtedly a celebrity in her chosen field, she is not a professional, but that is simply because she is not paid to do what she loves, which is to write letters to strangers.
Continue reading...Whether talking to family, friends or strangers, calls hardly ever end when both parties are ready
So you just called to say “I love you” – but how long should you stay on the phone?
New research suggests no matter who we’re talking to, or what we’re talking about, conversations rarely conclude when the two individuals want them to end.
Continue reading...Long-term social isolation is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. What has the last year meant for those who don’t share their homes?
When the first headlines about coronavirus began to appear in January 2020, they had little impact on south Londoner TJ, 25. “It seems outrageous now, but I thought: ‘I’m young, I’m healthy, I’ll be fine.’” By the time the first lockdown was announced, his mindset had begun to shift. He’d been single “for ever” and his housemate was spending lockdown with her parents, but he felt that same batten-down-the-hatches optimism many did in the era of weekly clapping and Zoom quizzes. “But that first weekend, the silence of the house and all the hours to fill – I got this inkling… mentally, I don’t know where I’ll be at the end of this. Four weeks in, I was genuinely scared for my mental health, I wasn’t coping at all.”
TJ is one of an estimated 7.7 million people in the UK who lived alone for most or all of the last year. “It’s not a game of Top Trumps, it’s not like my anxiety is more profound,” he says. “But it is different when you’re experiencing it all on your own.” In November 2020 the Office for National Statistics released findings that showed acute loneliness had climbed to record levels, with 8% of adults (around 4.2 million people) feeling “always or often lonely”, and 16-29-year-olds twice as likely as the over-70s to experience loneliness in the pandemic. “You’d never think fear of missing out would exist when we’re all stuck at home,” TJ says. “But I’d be scrolling through Instagram, seeing friends with their boyfriends or housemates, and thinking: ‘I wish I had someone. I feel so alone.’”
Continue reading...From anxiety to grief, our charts illustrate five areas of mental strain faced by people across the country
Continue reading...Modern life has led to greater isolation, which can fuel an array of disorders. If there are medications for social pains like depression and anxiety, why not loneliness?
Loneliness is part of the human condition. A primeval warning sign, like hunger or thirst, to seek out a primary resource: connection. Millions of years of evolution have shaped us into creatures who need social bonds in the same way that we need food and water.
And yet we increasingly find ourselves isolated. Loneliness is no longer a powerful enough driver to break us out of the silos created by modern life. Like our insatiable love of high-calorie foods, what was once an adaptive tool has become so misaligned with the way we live that it’s causing, in the words of the former surgeon general Vivek H Murthy, an “epidemic”.
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