The first public hearings of an inquiry into loneliness have begun in New South Wales today. Submissions include calls to create a minister for loneliness and boosting frontline services and research. The inquiry follows a national report last year that found more than a quarter of all Australians are impacted by loneliness. Dr Michelle Lim is the CEO of 'Ending Loneliness Together', a network of organisations tackling this issue. She spoke at the recent inquiry, and says the solution lies in preventative measures.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The main point I really am making is that we don't just need investments in community
00:07and individual solutions, but we also need population-wide strategies that can prevent
00:13the onset of chronic loneliness.
00:16So prevention is just as important as interventions.
00:20And there's a lot of work that we need to start doing, including developing and co-designing
00:26and coordinating a statewide strategy to promote social connection and to address loneliness
00:32and social isolation.
00:33Dr Limah, is it easy to pinpoint what are causes of loneliness?
00:39There are actually multiple causes of loneliness, all the way from our brain, biology, genetics,
00:46to our mental health, physical health, our ability to move easily across different environments.
00:54Loneliness itself is a natural response for us to do something different about our social
00:58relationships, but what we're finding is that when we actually start to feel lonely, many
01:03of us start to stay lonely.
01:06So approximately one in four Australians report what we call persistent levels of loneliness.
01:11That is actually what we're trying to address, not loneliness per se, but ongoing, enduring
01:17forms of loneliness.
01:19And does it impact one particular age group?
01:23So loneliness does fluctuate across the ages, and depending on the surveys that you find,
01:29you tend to find different age groups that do report loneliness.
01:33In our survey, Why You Feel Lonely and the State of the Nation Report on Social Connection
01:38in Australia, we're noticing that young people 18 to 24 are just disproportionately reporting
01:45high levels of loneliness.
01:48What then can be done in the immediate term?
01:54I think what we really need to do is actually coordinate our efforts.
01:58We have a lot of good interventions and solutions out there, strategies.
02:03What we really don't know about is how effective they are, and we really need a sound foundation
02:09from where we can actually take action that is effective and actually will result into
02:16savings for the government.
02:18So the first thing really for government to do is really coordinate a response that's
02:22evidence-based that actually allows people with live-and-living experience to channel
02:27in and to have a voice in this issue.
02:30I mean, part of the discussion here, Dr Lim, is whether there should be a minister for
02:34loneliness.
02:36Is that needed?
02:37Isn't tackling loneliness within communities, amongst people?
02:43Government has a role to play in addressing loneliness, all the way down from you and
02:47me to our communities, all the way down to our workplaces and our schools.
02:52Government has a huge role to play, and if done correctly, they can actually instigate
02:59effective change to implement more widely, to affect more people.
03:05Communities are very poorly resourced.
03:08Individuals can only do so much.
03:09We actually need to work with government and people with live-and-live experience to
03:14be able to make an effective impact.
03:17This is an issue that's commonly experienced, but it's not easy to resolve because it's
03:21an intersectorial issue.
03:23So a minister to address loneliness, not for loneliness, to address loneliness is critical
03:29because they can actually work across different portfolios and different sectors of government.
03:35And ploughing money into it by creating a ministerial position and various bodies within
03:41the community, pumping money into it, is that recoupable in terms of the benefits to healthcare?
03:49We do know that investments into loneliness programs, for example, for every dollar we
03:53put in, it's around more than $2 that we do get back, and this is kind of more interventions
03:59just solely on older adults.
04:01We do know that that investment might be worthwhile long-term.
04:06People who are lonely are actually utilizing services a lot more in terms of health and
04:10community services, but they're more likely to experience sickness and take more sick
04:15leave even within employment.
04:18And people who are lonely actually have poorer educational outcomes.
04:21So it is worthwhile doing this.
04:23Enough robust scientific evidence for us to no longer position loneliness as a soft issue.
04:30This is a public health, social, and community issue that we actually have to work together
04:36to address in a comprehensive way.