How ‘True’ Loneliness Can Affect Your Health
Two studies by the same team have found that true loneliness is caused by a lack of depth in communication and connection and that it can often be an underlying health problem in people who hoard friends and have a busy social life.
Meeting up with numerous friends, following them on Twitter, or staying in touch with former coworkers does not carry much clout in combating true loneliness, which is a lack of depth of one-to-one communication. Lacking this underlying deeper connection affects health in ways that are becoming clearer: it reduces the regenerative effect of sleep, the ability to cope with stress and individuals’ attention to health. The mere presence of a relationship, even a “close” one, did not affect this tendency towards loneliness and diminished health.
One study appears in summary form in the June issue of the journal, Health Communication and the second will appear in a future issue. The first study is now available in full-text format at: http://bit.ly/coSuiC.