Loneliness Awareness Week 2023
Loneliness Awareness Week is a week dedicated to connections: creating supportive communities to combat loneliness by having conversations with family, friends or colleagues to raise awareness of it. Loneliness is a natural human emotion – we are hardwired to need social connections. By talking about it, we can support ourselves and others and reduce the stigma around it.
At Sonnet, we have been thinking about the ways that we consider the impact of loneliness, and the value of activities that help to prevent it – a consistent theme which has been drawn from our work with housing associations and those providing services to the elderly, amongst others.
The experience of loneliness
Loneliness is a perceived mismatch between the quality or quantity of social connections that a person experiences compared to what they would like. You don’t have to be on your own to feel lonely. You might feel lonely in a relationship or while spending time with friends or family – especially if you don’t feel understood or cared for by the people around you. Most of us will experience loneliness at some point in our lives, regardless of age, circumstance and background. We all experience loneliness differently.
The Marmalade trust has an excellent guide to understanding loneliness. Similarly, Age UK has published resources and support to help those who are lonely or know someone who is.
Loneliness can be both a contributing factor to, or a consequence of, other challenges. We saw this in our work with GAMSTOP during 2020, where we found that people were reporting feeling loneliness in their experience of problematic gambling, but also that loneliness during Covid-19 lockdowns had drawn some people to begin gambling for the first time as an activity to alleviate that feeling.
Our research
One of the most recent examples of the emergent theme of loneliness in our work, was the social value report Sonnet produced for Anchor Housing in 2020. Our research was centred around the long-term health implications loneliness can have upon a person’s physical wellbeing without effective support. Throughout this research, we consistently heard about how elderly people in their properties were at risk of loneliness or had experienced loneliness at some point.
We discovered four striking statistics linked to loneliness:
- The risk of a person developing dementia increases by 90%
- The risk of heart disease increases by 29%
- The risk of suffering a stroke increases by 32%
- A lonely person is 3.4x more likely to experience depression
Combating loneliness, therefore, can result in significant savings for the NHS, cited in the New Economy Manchester Unit Cost Database. For example, the cost of treating a patient with dementia is around £20,000 per year to the NHS, whilst the cost of caring for a patient with a stroke is over £48,000 per year. Similarly, the annual cost of treating depression is around £9404 per year.
Taking into account these likelihoods and costs to the NHS, we were able to calculate that actions to address loneliness by Anchor had an annual value of £3,000 per person. As is so often the case, we find that ‘doing the right thing’ brings long term financial benefits to the state.
Connection Matters
One in six Anchor residents cited companionship, or being closer to loved ones, as a reason for moving into an Anchor property. Their residential offering aimed to address loneliness through a variety of endeavours:
- Access to conversation and communication (e.g. communal spaces and activities, encouraging digital access to communication with friends and family and the resident ‘pen pal’ initiative);
- Partnerships with local outreach organisations such as Age UK to promote engagement and support;
- The presence of an on-site Local Housing Manager who provides a friendly point of daily contact;
- Allowing pets, which provide an alternative to human companionship.
What can you do:
Loneliness Awareness Week is an opportunity to get involved to make a difference where you are: there will be many ways for everyone to do something. Whether you are a small or large business, organisation, community group or individual, there is something for everyone.
The Loneliness Awareness Week campaign, hosted by the Marmalade Trust, enables friends, colleagues and neighbours to connect together and build a sense of community. Get your free supporter pack (including supporting resource and assets) to get you started and enable you to take part, either as a supporting organisation or an individual.
Whether it’s your regular barista, the friendly dog on your walk, or the shopkeeper down the road, everyday moments of connection matter. They enable us to feel happier and less lonely. For Loneliness Awareness Week 2023, we’re encouraging everyone to harness these moments of connection. Together, we can all feel less lonely.
Footnotes
Anchor is England’s largest provider of specialist housing and care to for those in later life; managing 54,000 homes (both for rent and sale to those aged 55 and over), across almost 1,700 sites and operating in more than 85% of local councils in England.
Jake Kemp, Executive
