On a Sunday, if there were no family visitors, my late, independently minded mother, in her 80s, would get on a bus to stave off that creeping sense of depressing isolation, particularly associated with weekends, bank holidays and special occasions, a time when everyone else appears to be happily bonded in the company of others.
On the bus, for an hour or so, going wherever it took her, she would meet others similar in age to herself to pass the time of day, exchange neutral comments on the weather, EastEnders and the cost of a perm, and return home, cheerier, topped up by a little human connection. A lifelong royalist, what my mother would never have done is accept the sovereign’s invitation to this weekend’s Big Lunch or tomorrow’s single day of volunteering, The Big Help Out. A lot of people aren’t built that way. Nor are they of an age that makes it acceptable to use free transport to chat to strangers. But they are desperately lonely.
According to the Campaign to End Loneliness, 25 million people say they are occasionally, sometimes or often lonely – and they are those brave enough to be honest. Equally alarming, figures published last month indicate that, for the first time, those between 16 and 29 are twice as likely to report feeling lonely often or always (9.7%) than those aged over 70. While among those aged 30 to 49, 8.2% report feeling lonely compared with only 3.7% of the over-70s. All Alone Am I hasn’t yet become the nation’s alternative national anthem but the scale of isolation is a warning.
Post-Covid, volunteering is in sharp decline. In addition, pubs are closing, church attendance is down, community spaces, youth clubs, children’s centres, nurseries, day centres, recreation parks, swimming pools, anywhere people can meet, make friends, open up to worlds beyond their own, has been savaged first by austerity cuts and now by the cost of living crisis. The long hours of employment and commutes has also depleted the numbers of those who were once willing to lend a hand in their spare time. When civic society is razed in so many ways, loneliness spreads with the rapidity of knotweed. Something has to be done.
In the US, last week, Dr Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general (the nation’s doctor), said that loneliness was a public health emergency, affecting one in two Americans. Its impact is as serious as addiction and obesity, and is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. To tackle it, he published a six-point national framework.
The late neuroscientist Professor John T Cacioppo, co-writer of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, explained how isolation also has an impact on heart disease, depression, anxiety and dementia, while “it limits our ability to internally regulate our emotions – all of which can combine to trap us in self-defeating behaviours that reinforce the very isolation that we dread”. In contrast: “Connection adds more water to the well that nourishes our human potential.”
So how are England and Wales tackling this silent enemy of good health and wellbeing? We do have a minister in charge of loneliness – Stuart Andrew – but who would know? In 2018, as a result of the MP Jo Cox’s commission on loneliness, Theresa May, to her credit, launched the government’s first strategy to tackle the issue as “a foundation for a generation of policy work”. The latest annual report, published in March, bafflingly says: “We will continue to remind people that it is OK to feel lonely.” Current aims are to reduce stigma, create “a lasting shift” and improve research to encourage further action. The report also helpfully provides a list of those groups most likely to be affected by loneliness. They include young people, women, unemployed people, those who have recently moved – no one is excluded.
Over the past five years, a loneliness network of 300 organisations has been created and small pots of money provided. For instance, £30m for a “Know Your Neighbourhood” scheme. However, this is inadequate. On the one hand, we have the continuing damage to the social fabric created by government incompetence and policies, while on the other we have the loneliness “strategy” and its attempt to darn a few holes. It won’t work.
In contrast, in the US, Murthy understands that loneliness is about every aspect of society – economic, social, structural. “Service is a powerful antidote to loneliness,” he told BBC News, but it needs an ecology that fosters, not handicaps it. Murthy’s framework includes investment in public transport, education, youth services, libraries, green spaces. It expects more from employers and tech giants, better research and innovation to encourage families and friends to switch off social media and reconnect.
Of course, currently, in many UK communities, giving back and reaching out happens all the time, although it may not be formally labelled as volunteering. But even in these areas built on service, kindness and reciprocity, there will be well-hidden individuals deeply distressed by their soul-destroying solitariness. So, how can they be reached?
• Yvonne Roberts is a freelance journalist, writer and broadcaster
