No man is an island, it has been said. This is very true of humans who are social in nature and gather in groups, like many others in the animal kingdom. While there are people who enjoy far more solitude than average, the human condition is such that we need to interact with each other on a constant and permanent basis.
More and more we see how much power the mind has over the body. How stress can make us physically ill and how sex, physical activity, positives social interactions and employment can make our bodies stronger and happier. So when our minds are stressed ... or lonely, the body can react in such a negative manner that it can fade into illness and sometimes, ultimately, death.
The website New Republican published an article recently on the "Science of Loneliness" that documents what can happen to a lonely or isolated person which can lead to their physical death.
The article talks about renowned therapist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann who cured an "incurable" young woman with schizophrenia who went on to great success and thanked her in her famous book "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden".
Fromm-Reichmann believed that loneliness was at the bottom of many mental illnesses and her paper "On Loneliness" became a well-known work on the science of loneliness.
She spoke about the treachery of loneliness. She advised her fellow therapists to never let go of very isolated and non-communicative patients, believing them to be in dire need of care, lest they became physically ill from loneliness. Her belief system begot many other studies on how loneliness affects the body.
New Republican also cited a study done on gay men by Steven Cole, a post-doctoral student who wanted to see if the fear of rejection that loneliness caused mattered in terms of a person's physical health.
Cole evaluated men who had HIV/AIDS, and their life expectancy based on whether they were in or out of the closet, thus pointing to isolation and loneliness as factors.
Those men who were in the closet and who had feared rejection for years, died two to three years earlier than men who were out and were not worried about rejection and didn't suffer the loneliness that ensued.
What was taken from studies like these is that people get sicker when they don't have emotional support from a social circle around them.
In an article I wrote for EmpowHER about Broken Heart Syndrome, I spoke about the phenomenon of spouses dying in quick succession, often due to the stress of loneliness brought on by the death of a person they have lived with most of their lives.
A heart attack is often assumed but this isn't always the case. Doctors believe there's a correlation between hormones and the cardiac system, brought on from the stress and loneliness of losing a loved one -- a classic case of the distressed mind causing the body to fail.
So can this depth of loneliness be stopped to avoid early deaths? Positive social interactions and acceptance are key. Some experts recommend spending more time with children who may go on to suffer from rejection as adults.
Some believe that many "newer" conditions like ADD and ADHD may be due to a sense of loneliness and isolation in children who are more apt to spend time alone or glued to video games where human interaction isn't common.
One expert featured in the New Republic article, James Heckman, a Nobel Prize–winning economist at the University of Chicago, lays the blame of isolation and loneliness in young people squarely on their parents who are not providing enough attention to their kids.
"As inequality has increased, childhood inequality has increased,” Heckman said, “So has inequality of parenting.”
“Mothers matter,” he said, “and mothering is in short supply.”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolati...
Heckman believes that too much solitude and loneliness in childhood can cause the same emotions in adulthood which can go on to impact a person's overall health. Modern childhoods are seeing too much solitude for children, thus impacting more adults than before.
Tell Us
Do you think loneliness can be strong enough to affect health? Affect it so much that a person could ultimately lose their life due to the loss of quality of life that it causes? What do you think of the views of James Heckman?
Sources:
New Republic. Science. "The Lethality of Loneliness. We now know how it can ravage our body and brain. Web. Retrieved May 15th, 2013.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolati...
EmpowHER.com. Heart and Blood. "Can You Really Die of a Broken Heart?". Retrieved May 16th 2013.
https://www.empowher.com/community/share/can-you-really-die-broken-heart
Reviewed May 20, 2013
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith