Category: loneliness

The Quarantine of Healthy Populations

Commentary A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles alongside my friend and colleague, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. A month prior, we had also lectured together also at a conference in Rome (which, alas, was not recorded). Fortunately, the LA talks were—link below. When the COVID-19 pandemic…


Dr. Steve Cole on Loneliness

Excerpts from our conversation with Dr. Cole, who heads the NIH-funded Social Genomics Core Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles Dr. Steve Cole. (newsinhealth.nih.gov) NIHNiH: Why is feeling lonely so damaging to people? Cole: People haven’t evolved to live alone. We’re highly dependent on others from birth on. Humans aren’t like other animals. We’re not…


Lockdowns Leave Australians Feeling Lonely

More Australians are feeling lonelier now than before the COVID-19 pandemic, new research has found. Telstra’s Talking Loneliness report released on Friday found 27 percent of people experienced loneliness for the first time during the pandemic, while almost half of Australians still feel lonely because of COVID-19 lockdowns. “The pandemic has really disrupted our social…


‘Dog People’ Less Likely to Be Lonely in Lockdowns

Australian research has discovered that dog owners tend to have different personality traits from cat owners and that the former tended to cope better with loneliness during COVID-19 lockdowns. Researchers at James Cook University surveyed 534 lone dwellers in Australia who were dog owners, cat owners, and those without pets during the second lockdown period,…


Coping With Loneliness

There’s a “Peanuts” cartoon panel that might make you smile or—thanks to our ongoing struggle with social isolation—even cry a little. Creator Charles Schulz’s famous hero, Charlie Brown, is lying in a puffy beanbag-type seat with a thought above his head: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you…


32% of GTA Residents Don’t Know Neighbours’ Names: Survey

Around one-third of residents living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) don’t know their neighbours’ names, according to a new survey. Conducted online by networking service Nextdoor among 500 GTA residents, the survey found 32 percent of respondents couldn’t name their neighbours. A majority (59 percent) of those who didn’t know their neighbours’ names lived in condos,…


The Psychology of Mimetic Contagion

Commentary My friend and colleague Dr. Mary Talley Bowden recently posed this important question, which has puzzled many people during the pandemic: Such a great question. A friend of mine from the age of 5 won’t have anything to do with me now because of my Covid views. I know we’ve all experienced this. @akheriaty…


Is Loneliness the New Smoking?

When Canadian pop icon Justin Bieber released his song “Lonely” in October of 2020, the 28-year-old star sang about the crushing loneliness he felt after becoming so famous at such an early age. Bieber’s song quickly topped the charts in Canada, as well as in countries as diverse as Hungary, Malaysia, and Norway. I’m not…


Making Friends as an Adult

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.” So sang Three Dog Night in 1969 in their hit song “One.” Six years later, a best-selling item for a while was the “pet rock,” a stone taken home and treated like a pet. Yes, that’s right, people actually bought rocks and either kept them for…


Loneliness, Social Isolation Can Increase Heart Disease Risk For Senior Women: UCSD Study

SAN DIEGO—Loneliness and social isolation among older women can increase heart disease risk by as much as 27 percent, according to a University of California–San Diego (UCSD)-led study published Feb. 2. The findings of the study, published in Wednesday’s online issue of JAMA Network Open, reveal that social isolation and loneliness independently increased cardiovascular disease…