Persistent loneliness is not only emotionally painful but can be more damaging to our physical and mental health than many psychiatric illnesses. For instance, lonely people sleep poorly, experience severe depression and anxiety, have reduced immune and cardiovascular functioning and exhibit sings of early cognitive decline that grow more severe over time.
Not surprisingly, psychologists have created dozens of interventions designed to try to tackle this epidemic of loneliness. The approaches taken are varied but can be broken up, roughly speaking, into four different categories.
There are interventions aimed at:
- Improving social skills. Some researchers argue loneliness is primarily the result of lacking the interpersonal skills required to create and maintain relationships. Typically, these interventions involve teaching people how to be less socially awkward — to engage in conversation, speak on the phone, give and take compliments, grow comfortable with periods of silence and communicate in positive ways non-verbally.
- Enhancing social support. Many lonely people are victims of changing circumstances. These approaches offer professional help and counseling for the bereaved, elderly people who have been relocated and children of divorce.
- Increasing opportunities for social interaction. With this approach, the logic is simple: If people are lonely, give them opportunities to meet other people. This type of intervention, therefore, focuses on creating such opportunities through organized group activities.
- Changing maladaptive thinking. This approach might seem surprising, and its rationale less obvious than the other approaches. But recent research reveals that over time, chronic loneliness makes us increasingly sensitive to, and on the lookout for, rejection and hostility. In ambiguous social situations, lonely people immediately think the worst. For example, if coworker Bob seems more quiet and distant than usual lately, a lonely person is likely to assume that he’s done something to offend Bob, or that Bob is intentionally giving him the cold shoulder.
With four approaches to curing loneliness, the obvious question is: What works? Thanks to a recent meta-analysis of 50 different loneliness interventions, the answer is clear. Interventions aimed at changing maladaptive thinking patterns were, on average, four times more effective than other interventions in reducing loneliness. In fact, the other three approaches weren’t particularly effective at all.
More than anything else, the cure for persistent loneliness lies in breaking the negative cycle of thinking that created it in the first place.
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