Media Releases and Opportunities

It has been declared an epidemic that affects both emotional well-being and physical health, yet is largely unrecognised. It is loneliness and the World Health Organization estimates it affects around 10 per cent of young people and 25 per cent of the elderly. More recently, the U.S. Surgeon General warned that meaningful social connections are as fundamental for survival as diet and exercise.

But how do those who claim to be alone or friendless feel about their isolation and presumed loneliness?

Researchers at Dalhousie University and St. Francis Xavier explored that question in a new study that suggests those without close relations have a sometimes positive, yet conflicted experience with friendlessness.

Dr. Laura Eramian, an associate professor in Dalhousie’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, led the project that involved interviews with people in an Atlantic Canadian city who claimed to have no or few friends. She and her team found that friendless people both lament and celebrate their disconnection.

They discovered that participants struggle to find meaning and self-respect in their disconnection in a society where being friendless is open to stigma or pity. All 21 participants expressed that their friendlessness made them feel looked down on and framed as outcasts by popular images, the medical system, therapists and social workers who see them as unhealthy or at risk.

Dr. Eramian is available to discuss the research and how diverse meanings of aloneness improve our understanding of loneliness today and that while aloneness might be disparaged, it can also be celebrated as a sign of self-reliance.

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Media contact:

Alison Auld
Senior Research Reporter
Dalhousie University
Cell: 902-220-0491
Email: Alison.auld@dal.ca