Loneliness in our ageing nation

While loneliness can affect everyone at any age, it’s particularly prevalent in older people. Demographic trends in the UK mean the number of over 50s suffering from loneliness is set to reach 2 million by 2025/6. This compares to around 1.4 million in 2016/7 – a 49% increase in 10 years! 

The big picture

The statistics are pretty shocking and sad to see:

Two-fifths of all older people (about 3.9 million) say the television is their main company.

This makes sense considering that well over half (59%) of those aged 85 and over, and 38% of those aged between 75 and 85, live on their own. Older people that live on their own are often bereaved, having lost a partner, which is a huge cause for feelings of loneliness. But loneliness isn’t the same as actually being alone.

How bad is loneliness for our health?

Looking after our health is really important, even more so as we age. When we think about health it’s easy to  jump straight to diet and exercise, but did you know that loneliness and poor social connections are as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day? It’s also worse for you than obesity (Holt-Lunstad, 2010).

Studies show that loneliness and social isolation put individuals at greater risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

Staying connected as we age is so important. 

The population of people aged 65 and over rose by 2.3 million between mid-2009 and mid-2019, from 16.2% of the total population to 18.5%. Because loneliness is so common in older people, and the population of people over the age of 65 is getting bigger and bigger, it means that loneliness across the entire population is bound to increase. 

Should we all expect to feel lonely as we age?

Loneliness isn’t something that we should expect to feel when we get older, but sadly that seems to be the case.

Loneliness doesn’t just depend on your time of life, however. It can also be impacted by the time of year. Christmas is considered to be the loneliest time of the year for more than 1.5M older people.

Over a third (36%) of people are too embarrassed to admit that they feel lonely at Christmas, and over a quarter of people (26%) would not feel able to ask for help at Christmas if they were struggling emotionally. (Mind survey, 2017).

It’s important for us to combat loneliness all year round, and the irony is that the more we talk about our feelings of loneliness, the less we feel alone. So let’s keep the conversation going and combat this epidemic together!