Feelings of disconnection, isolation or lack of belonging should not be underestimated and there's growing evidence that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking or obesity. Alarmingly, Australians are having less social contact than ever before despite living in a hyper connected world.
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00:00 Sometimes the prevalence of loneliness can differ depending on the sample that you survey.
00:06 Based on Australian Hilda's study, for example, we do know that loneliness measured across
00:11 a five-year period is as high as 34%.
00:14 And some of the typical factors are things like living in a more deprived neighbourhood,
00:21 being from single-parent households, having low income.
00:23 Those sorts of things tend to be quite consistent across national, international data.
00:28 And what are we seeing with rural-urban divide, men-women, young and old?
00:33 What we do know from large meta-analyses, so studies that have pooled data from across
00:40 many studies, is that actually the rates of loneliness between men and women are quite
00:44 equivalent.
00:45 There is some emerging research around rural and remote, that perhaps that people who are
00:52 living in more rural areas actually have less access to meaningful social activities and
00:57 therefore may report higher levels of loneliness.
01:02 And so across states, though, we don't really see all too much difference.
01:06 However, I think again, these sorts of results are very much dependent on the sample that
01:11 you survey, and those sorts of things can change.
01:15 And just to be clear, loneliness is not the same as social isolation.
01:20 How would you describe it?
01:21 Absolutely.
01:23 So loneliness is really what we call subjective feeling, where you feel your relationships
01:28 do not meet your current social needs.
01:31 And so it's very much related more to the quality as opposed to quantity.
01:34 So you feel like you do not have those meaningful social connections for you to really feel
01:40 fulfilled.
01:41 You might feel like people don't understand you, or perhaps you don't have anyone to turn
01:44 to or talk to, despite actually being around people.
01:49 How are we making inroads in addressing it?
01:53 So I think what we really need to do is actually think about a comprehensive strategy to combat
01:58 loneliness and social isolation, which is also very important.
02:02 We don't actually have that at the moment.
02:04 So we need to think about how we can promote social connection in our day to day lives.
02:08 And the opportunities for us to kind of think about, you know, addressing loneliness within
02:13 kind of different kinds of policies, including health, education, well-being.
02:17 You know, we haven't quite got there yet, but we do know now that even our community
02:22 awareness about the issue is fairly low.
02:25 And actually, what we should be doing is also incredibly poor.
02:29 So we really need to start from there.
02:32 And I mean, yeah, we can address it at a society level in community groups, and also the individual
02:36 can make changes.
02:37 But on that individual level, do you think some people who are suffering loneliness recognize
02:42 that that is the issue in their life?
02:45 Gemma, actually, no, they don't.
02:47 Loneliness still carries what I call a huge amount of stigma in our community.
02:53 And this is really from years of misunderstanding what loneliness is.
02:56 We now know actually from robust scientific research that actually loneliness is much
03:01 more of an evolutionary signal, a human innate signals, not very dissimilar to feeling hungry
03:07 or thirsty.
03:08 It is a signal for us to connect with people so we can thrive and flourish.
03:12 But for some reason, we have this community stigma that loneliness is perhaps a deficit
03:19 of the individual.
03:21 And I think what I would really say is that loneliness itself is a very normal signal
03:26 for us to feel all the time.
03:28 And all of us would feel lonely at some point.
03:31 But many of us also do stay lonely because of factors that are absolutely out of our
03:36 control, you know, including things like what I mentioned before, kind of having low income,
03:42 you know, inability to access to other people in communities.
03:46 So you know, loneliness itself should now be seen, I think, as a normal signal for us
03:51 to connect.
03:53 But we need to really address that stigma that still continues in the community.
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