Loneliness can increase the risk of death

Many times we associate the loneliness to the negative feelings that the isolation.

However, today we know that it can also have very negative material repercussions. In fact, the feeling of prolonged loneliness can increase the risk of death by 26%, a percentage that increases to 32% in cases where social isolation is real. These are the data that psychologists from Brigham Young University have published in the magazine Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Loneliness May Increase Risk of Death, Study Finds

The study carried out by these researchers is a meta-analysis of different investigations in the field of social psychology which aims to find relationships between loneliness (real and perceived) and mortality patterns. What they found is what appears to be a correlation between social isolation and the risk of death so marked that it can have large-scale repercussions.

In addition, the results of the meta-analysis not only speak of an increased risk of death in those people who, due to their habits, have little contact with other people (that is, show cases of real social isolation) but the same thing happens in people who, regardless of the number of real interactions with others and the time spent on them, feel alone. Chronic loneliness, whether real or subjective, carries certain dangers.

That is why tackling this problem is more complicated than you might expect, since you not only have to intervene on the amount of real interactions with others, but also on the quality of these relationships.

Both the subjective and objective factors associated with loneliness may be affecting our health in various ways: producing episodes of stress, negatively affecting the functioning of the immune system, producing blood pressure states that favor the appearance of inflammations, leading to negative social dynamics, etc. All these factors interact with each other and feed into each other, and that is why, although they do not have to translate into the appearance of fatal accidents, they are wearing down the health of the organism, causing them to age earlier and complications of all kinds appear.

Virtually all the benefits associated with a life full of satisfying relationships can go a long way. to get an idea of ​​the negative aspects of the lack of physical and affective contact with the rest.

Loneliness: a problem that spreads in the western world

These conclusions are especially worrying if we take into account that in Western countries more and more people are living alone or without having strong ties to any community. In addition, new forms of communication through digital media they are not conducive to sustained face-to-face relationships, and there are even new ways of working that require no more company than a laptop and a drink.

In addition, a large part of the population at risk of social isolation is precisely those in a more delicate state of health: older people. These people may find themselves at a point where the family lives very far away, the contact with co-workers and there are hardly any social activities that are aimed at they.

Offering these older people (and ourselves) contexts in which to develop diverse social ties can be one of the fundamental keys to improving people's health on a large scale and preventing certain accidents from occurring fatal. The result, in addition, would be the construction of a well cohesive society, with all the advantages that this entails.

Bibliographic references:

• Holdt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T. and Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10 (2), consulted in http://pps.sagepub.com/content/10/2/227.full.pdf