How to fight America’s loneliness epidemic

Vice Admiral Dr. Vivek H. Murthy is used to making history.

The 47-year-old clinician and research scientist is the country’s first surgeon general of Indian descent and the youngest active federal flag officer in uniform.

But if General Murthy succeeds in his latest struggle—whose announcement was largely lost last spring amid daily bombings and scandals—he will succeed in another historic first: a primal quest.

“When I took office,” Murthy recently wrote, “I did not consider loneliness to be a public health issue.” He then embarked on a “listening tour across the country… which surprised me.” The culmination of this process was Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The US Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.

Released in May 82-page study was a call to arms to help America become less lonely.

It is a road map of sorts for the nation to fulfill what the Surgeon General called “an obligation” in his foreword. . . making the same investments in tackling social connections that we have made in tackling tobacco use, obesity and the addiction crisis.”

This quasi-official designation of loneliness as an “epidemic” – The Centers for Disease Control only describes loneliness and social isolation as “widespread problems” – based on data from the fields of sociology, psychology, neuroscience, political science, economics, and public health.

The need for such efforts is clear – even if ending social isolation may ultimately be beyond government control.

About half of Americans –before the pandemic— reported on current experiences of loneliness.

These respondents had higher rates of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety and premature death.

“The effects of social distancing on mortality,” Murthy noted, “are similar to, and even greater than, those caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. . . obesity and physical inactivity.”

At least statistically speaking, New York is the symbol of the country.

That’s according to the city’s health department “More than half” of New Yorkers recently said they feel lonely “sometimes”.

This is hardly surprising in a city where 32% of residents live alone.

Each of us, the Murthy report recommends, should “take small steps each day to strengthen our relationships.”

Immediate action has also been called for in the areas of schools and workplaces, healthcare and public health systems. technology companyreligious organizations and governments at all levels.

The country’s health system, for example, has been encouraged to “integrate social contact into prevention and care efforts at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.”

what is loneliness

Murthy cited feelings of isolation, invisibility, and insignificance; However, its prescriptions for federal action recognize a fundamental problem across the business, specifically calling for the creation of “standardized definitions for relevant terms.”

Fay Bound Alberti, a British writer who describes herself as a “historian of medicine, emotion, gender, and the body,” wrote in 2109’s “A Biography of Loneliness: The History of An Emotion” that she wanted to “disprove” the notion that loneliness was “an integral part of be of the human condition.”

The use of the word in English before 1800 was “negligible,” Alberti argued, while the sentiments the term embodied are “a recent phenomenon.” . . a product of the 19th century, of an increasingly scientific, philosophical and industrial focus on the individual over the collective.”

Only relatively recently has this collective been weakened; In fact, as late as 1940, more than 90 percent of Americans lived with other people.”

Until 1940 less than 10% of Americans lived alone.

In his seminal work lonliness (1961) represented Dr. Clark Moustakas, a Detroit-based psychologist, takes a more humanistic view of the issue.

Moustakas called the condition “neither good nor bad, but a point more intense and…” Timeless Consciousness of Self” (emphasis added).

What is unmistakably new is the conviction that loneliness can be eradicated – and that this is a task for the federal government.

Murthy isn’t the first to take up this idea.

In the 1976 novel Slapstick Author Kurt Vonnegut envisioned a candidate in a dystopian future who wins the White House with the promise of “Lonely Never Again.”

By order of fictional President Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, federal computers assign every American a new middle name, with groups of about 10,000 people given the same new name in addition to their existing names.

This major state intervention was intended to strengthen social connections through these shared—albeit fabricated—identity markers.

As Vonnegut explained in Playboy: “If someone rings my doorbell and says, ‘Hey, you’re a chipmunk and I’m a chipmunk; “I need a hundred dollars,” I would listen to his story if I felt like it, and give him what I could spare.”

Within two decades, the first social media platform went live, digitizing the great connectedness Vonnegut predicted.

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram created virtual communities full of extended families of “friends” and “followers” who could be exploited, rejected, or ignored in the real world.

Naturally, as Murthy himself points out, Social media often makes people feel lonely even lonelier.

Murthy’s boss, President Biden, did stressed mental health on White House news, but has never spoken publicly about loneliness — even when loneliness has It has proven particularly dangerous for older Americans like Biden.

But given the multiplying effects of the disease – decreased economic productivityincreasing polarization and political paralysis – Murthy insists Americans will suffer greater costs from inaction.

“We will continue to divide and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country,” Murthy wrote. “Rather than coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will retreat further and further into our corners – angry, sick and alone.”

James Rosen is the Chief White House Correspondent for Newsmax and most recently the author of “Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936-1986.”