A lonely planet: time to tackle loneliness as a public health issue

The brief experience of feeling disconnected from others is sometimes referred to as transient loneliness, which is a common feeling we all experience at some stage in our life. Our recent research paper published in The BMJ, however, focused on “problematic levels of loneliness,”which in most studies was defined by chronicity, such as feeling lonely often or most of the time. We found national loneliness prevalence data for 113 countries and territories, suggesting a widespread interest in loneliness research.5 Data from most countries suggest that problematic loneliness is a common experience. Secondly, there are clear data gaps by geographic regions and country income groups. Measuring and tracking social wellbeing is common in Europe—several large multi-country population surveys haveprovided richdata for Europeans across different age groups. By contrast, data are insufficient or non-existent for most low and middle income countries. Thirdly, theprevalence of loneliness varied considerably across countries, and even within the same region. For example, we found the lowest prevalenceof loneliness innorthernEurope, but some of the highest in eastern Europe. Fourth, despite the commonclaimof lonelinessbeingagrowingproblem, we found insufficient evidence to conclude whether loneliness prevalence has increased or decreased over time.