Feeling alone is not just an emotional problem: it is also an economic issue. Thus revealed a new study based on expense at the British National Health Service.
Already in 2018 the UK government believed that loneliness was a serious socioeconomic problem. So it decided to create a Ministry of Solitude. Countries like Japan as well, due to the exponential increase in the number of suicides.
Now a new one published this month in the magazine PLOS One reveals the real impact of mental health expense of people who feel alone: in some cases solitary people give a Extra expense of almost 980 euros to the National British Health Service (NHS) compared to people who do not feel alone.
“We found that people who experience loneliness, especially in adult youth and advanced age, incorporate higher costs for NHS Compared to those who do not feel alone, ”explained researcher Nia Morrish.
And the problem of loneliness affects many British: a national bulletin of the beginning of this year, recalls, revealed that about 25% of adults in Britain felt alone oftenalways or sometimes, and about 7% felt alone or always. The data were taken from Understanding Society, a country panel.
According to a meta-analysis of 148 studies involving 308,849 people, loneliness Reduces the quality of life and increases the risk of Depression, anxiety and early death.
Researchers from the new study also concluded that the bad social connection is really comparable to smoking and obesity regarding social impacts.
And this mental health expenditure of the British health system can only be the tip of the iceberg, the researchers point out, since loneliness is also related to other factors, such as reduced productivity, absenteeism and greater turnover.
