A significant report from the NSW Upper House has found that widespread loneliness is a social scourge associated with poor mental and physical health, poor social behaviour, and poor educational and employment outcomes.
“The prevalence, causes and impacts of loneliness in New South Wales” cited many studies – and all agreed that there is a crisis.
The state government’s own Life Satisfaction Survey found that 15 per cent of people surveyed strongly agreed that they often felt lonely and 32 per cent said that they “had no one to lean on in times of trouble”.
Loneliest of is the 18-24-year-old cohort with 41 per cent of them complaining about “persistent loneliness”.
None of this surprised Bishop Daniel Meagher. He lives in Surry Hills, an inner city suburb dominated by housing commission flats – which could be regarded as the epicentre of Sydney’s loneliness epidemic.
“There are so many people with mental and other illnesses who live singly and sit on benches singly, and they might chat with each other, but they’re pretty lonely,” he told The Catholic Weekly.
Loneliness is a complex issue, the report stresses, but Bishop Meagher believes marriage and the family are key factors.
“You see smaller families, broken families, kids who don’t have brothers and sisters and cousins around.
“There’s a lack of meaning. We’re created by God and for God, and if we have no awareness of that, we’re just all alone in a meaningless universe.
“And that can be a cause of anxiety, and you feel all alone.”
People who have no spiritual connection are particularly vulnerable, Bishop Meagher said.
“They might be a single mum or single dad or a merged family. Often there are very few people about. They’re left alone with their phone, which just distracts them into a million different directions. And when they get off the phone, they’re empty; they look around and think, well, I’m all alone.”
The report recommends a “whole of society” approach to tackling loneliness on “individual, community and population levels” with everyone pitching in – “individuals and families, schools and workplaces, health care and public health systems, technology companies, state governments, faith organisations, and communities”.
“In a compassionate society, these (negative) impacts alone justify concerted action by government and others to address loneliness,” says Dr Sarah Kaine MLC, the chair of the committee which wrote the report.
With more people living alone, families shrinking, birth rates falling, and the number of elderly increasing, loneliness is being flagged as a serious problem everywhere in the developed world.
The World Health Organization has described loneliness as “a global public health priority”. In 2023, the then-US Surgeon General, Dr Vivek Murthy, wrote that “addressing the crisis of loneliness and isolation is one of our generation’s greatest challenges.”
He claimed that the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
The report cited a research group at the University of Sydney, Ending Loneliness Together.
It found that lonely Australians are twice as likely to have chronic disease, 4.6 times more likely to report clinical levels of depression, 4.1 times more likely to report social anxiety, and 5.2 times more likely to report poor wellbeing.
They are less active, more addicted to social media, and less productive at work.
The parliamentary report puts a dollar value on the societal costs of loneliness in Australia – $2.7 billion a year.
The number of possible solutions in the report for building “meaningful connections and a sense of belonging and purpose”, in the words of Dr Kaine, the MLC who chaired the report, is overwhelming.
But a stand-out observation is that some suburbs are “lonelygenic” – planned to fail at social connection.
“The residents of Western Sydney … do not have the same access to public transport, green space and sporting facilities as other areas,” according to the report.
The Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association of NSW told the committee that “many Australian suburbs, especially newly developed suburbs, are characterised by large, single-family homes, car-centric streets, limited walkability, negligible public transport access, limited green space and a total lack of third spaces. … By definition, this promotes social atomisation, the weakening of community connections and, as a result, loneliness and isolation.”
Kate Viviers, CEO of Open Support, a charity linked to St Vincent’s Clinic in Darlinghurst, says everyone can bring a grain of sand to this massive social problem.
“It takes only a moment to check in and get to know your neighbours. You never know how a simple hello can change someone’s day,” she says.
“Say yes to invitations, volunteer or join a group with similar interests. Reach out to old friends for a coffee or catch up – it is never too late to reconnect.”
Christmas obviously offers special opportunities to reach out.
Nellie Doueihi is in charge of outreach to the sick and elderly at St Declan’s parish in Penshurst and St Joseph’s parish in Oatley. She’s passionate about loneliness-busting intergenerational connections.
She has found that 45 per cent of the aged care residents in her area do not get visitors. This Christmas about 30 of the parish’s young adults will sing carols in two local nursing homes and a retirement village.
“Our parish mission is bringing the love of God to life in people, and to reach out to the wider community. The nursing homes are more isolated and lonely and we try to help, bring some joy.”
That’s an example of what Bishop Meagher says will happen when people are “spiritually connected”.
“As we grow spiritually, that sense of the isolated self, the narcissistic me, me, me, the individuality which is so rampant in our Western society declines within us as the love of God starts to grow in us,” he says.
Christmas offers special moments for fighting loneliness, but he says, “it needs to extend beyond Christmas to the rest of the year.”