Trevor felt ‘invisible’ after his wife died – now experts are trying new ways to tackle Australia’s loneliness epidemic​on January 11, 2025 at 7:00 pm

One in four Australians report feeling persistently lonely, with doctors increasingly ‘prescribing’ non-medical activities to improve wellbeing and social connectionFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastTrevor Gough is as socially active as they come. At 85, he volunteers regularly at Meals on Wheels, cycles upwards of 10km a few times a week, often catches up with friends for coffee and sees his two children.But he lives alone, and is not immune to bouts of loneliness. Gough’s wife, to whom he was married for 54 years, died seven years ago. “It was a big blow … [We had] known one another for 60 years,” he says. “You come back to an empty house.”Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading…One in four Australians report feeling persistently lonely, with doctors increasingly ‘prescribing’ non-medical activities to improve wellbeing and social connectionFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastTrevor Gough is as socially active as they come. At 85, he volunteers regularly at Meals on Wheels, cycles upwards of 10km a few times a week, often catches up with friends for coffee and sees his two children.But he lives alone, and is not immune to bouts of loneliness. Gough’s wife, to whom he was married for 54 years, died seven years ago. “It was a big blow … [We had] known one another for 60 years,” he says. “You come back to an empty house.”Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading…   

Trevor Gough is as socially active as they come. At 85, he volunteers regularly at Meals on Wheels, cycles upwards of 10km a few times a week, often catches up with friends for coffee and sees his two children.

But he lives alone, and is not immune to bouts of loneliness. Gough’s wife, to whom he was married for 54 years, died seven years ago. “It was a big blow … [We had] known one another for 60 years,” he says. “You come back to an empty house.”

“You can … go and do your shopping and basically you’re invisible,” he says. “You go to pubs and things like that, you sit on your own. That sometimes reiterates the fact that you’re on your own … you get a little bit lonely.”

Gough’s experience is not uncommon. One in four Australians have reported feeling persistently lonely, defined as for a period of at least eight weeks, according to an Ending Loneliness Together report published in August, which surveyed participants in the latter half of 2023.

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Loneliness – as distinct from social isolation, which refers to objectively little social contact and few relationships – is defined as a subjectively unpleasant feeling of lack of connection to others, and a desire for more, or more satisfying, social relationships. Transient loneliness is a normal part of the human experience. But chronic loneliness has been linked to myriad health problems and earlier death.

A global problem – and a local one

Internationally, governments have recognised loneliness as a major health and social issue. In 2023, the World Health Organization launched a commission on social connection, months after the US surgeon general, Dr Vivek Murthy, described loneliness as an epidemic on par with tobacco use. The UK and Japan have dedicated loneliness ministers, while many countries – the UK, Ireland, Denmark among them – have national plans to tackle loneliness.

Loneliness has been described as one of Australia’s “most pressing public health concerns” – but experts say that without a formal strategy to address the issue, the country is falling behind.

At a symposium convened by Ending Loneliness Together in Sydney in November, researchers noted anecdotal reports of people regularly ordering deliveries purely for the social connection of signing for parcels; high rates of loneliness have also previously been observed in people who frequently present at emergency departments.

“We are probably one of the few countries that have done an economic costing on loneliness, which is $2.7bn per year or $1,565 for every person who becomes lonely, and that is just in the health costings,” says Michelle Lim, the scientific chair and chief executive of Ending Loneliness Together. “Yet we do not have a [national] strategy.”

Loneliness increases the risk of conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia and stroke, says Philayrath Phongsavan, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney. The link appears to be bidirectional: “Compared to those without long-term health conditions, those with chronic illness have twice the risk of chronic loneliness,” she says.

Lim says signs of vascular ageing can be seen in young people who are lonely as early as 21, even when they may not have chronic disease or heart problems.

“Historically, when people have thought about loneliness, they think of the bookend groups of life … older adults, and adolescents and teens,” Dr Daniel Surkalim, a research fellow at the University of Sydney, says. “What we’re finding is, over time, older adults actually are no longer the most lonely age group.”

While loneliness among those 65 and older has steadily declined since 2001, young Australians now report loneliness at the highest rates, with recent figures ranging between 25% and 41%. Men are 1.5 times more likely to experience chronic loneliness than women.

Is there a ‘lonely ingredient’?

In New South Wales, a parliamentary inquiry is looking into the prevalence, causes and impacts of loneliness, with the next hearings planned for February.

Much of the research into what causes loneliness is inconclusive, Surkalim says. Findings have been mixed when it comes to technology, with some suggesting that the pervasiveness of social media may be a factor among young people.

Research on the effects of social media has found that platforms can help build a sense of community and belonging, but also engender isolation and emotional distress, depending on individual experience.

“There’s the whole aspect of cyberbullying, going down this negative spiral of doomscrolling and going through social media and comparing people with others,” says Surkalim. But, he agrees: “It’s not black and white [that] social media is a bad thing.”

The problem, Lim says, is not that people experience loneliness in and of itself, “but the fact that we’re living in an environment that means that we’re persistently lonely, in an environment where young people do not know where to seek the help that they need.”

“If we have the tools and resources to respond to it, then it doesn’t actually have to lead to poor health and wellbeing,” she says.

Or a ‘lonely cure’?

“What we really need to do is to think about prevention,” Lim says, “about living in a world or an environment that helps us meet people.”

“There are so many entry points to alleviating loneliness,” Phongsavan agrees. “Some would argue that we don’t need to intervene in loneliness directly but we can address other associated risk factors that tend to co-occur alongside [it] – things like physical activity promotion, which can also confer social support and social connection.”

New Australian research suggests time spent in nature – just one to two hours a week – can help provide relief from social loneliness. A connection with nature may enable people to reconnect with each other, suggests study co-lead Prof Thomas Astell-Burt of the University of Wollongong.

Engagement through volunteer work or active participation in sports or community organisations has been linked to reduced social isolation, though whether it is protective against loneliness is less clear.

Still, doctors and health departments are increasingly turning to social prescribing – the practice of “prescribing” non-medical activities to improve wellbeing and social connection.

A hopeful experiment

Trevor Gough recently participated in InterGen, a VicHealth-funded trial that aims to foster social connections between older adults and teens. For 12 weeks, he met with teenagers weekly to play board games for an hour.

InterGen focuses on adolescents and older people because they are “often excluded from public spaces because of their age”, says Diana Bossio, an associate professor at RMIT and the lead researcher on the project.

“Social connection can often be gendered,” she adds. “Women are much more likely to interact socially, just for the benefit of being social, whereas men often need a purpose or an outcome. For the men who did interact on this project, the benefits were immediate and very long lasting.”

The board game meet-up was part of InterGen’s first iteration, which involved five projects with five different local councils. A third iteration will run in 2025.A similar intergenerational trial is under way in NSW, while social enterprises like Youngster.co provide seniors with free public sessions on technology skills, taught by young people across the country.

“If we’re thinking about loneliness … it’s actually a community problem,” Bossio says. “It means that our spaces aren’t working, it means that our social programming isn’t working – it means that we’re not actually reaching the people that we need to.”

Having grown up in England, and being able to recall bombing during the second world war, Gough had doubts about how he could “relate to a younger generation” and their vastly different experiences. But despite his initial reluctance, he became fast friends with a group of girls – they brought him a birthday present when family members forgot to.

“I nearly teared up,” he recalls.