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Healthy Aging -
Most people probably think of aging as a gradual
physical decline from middle age onward, eventually
matched by a slowing down of the ability to learn or
perform intellectually. |
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Lonely? You've Got Company!
Loneliness study shows nearly a third of adults are lonely
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News
Loneliness is all about feeling isolated, but it's actually
quite common, a new study shows.
The study appears in the
Journal of Clinical Nursing.
It's based on a survey of more than 1,200 adults in Australia
who were aged 18 and older.
Among the findings:
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Almost a third of participants (35%) reported being lonely.
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Men were more likely than women to report being lonely.
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People who said they had "strong religious beliefs" were
less likely to report being lonely.
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People with higher incomes reported less loneliness.
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The researchers included William Lauder, PhD, RMN. He's a
professor at the nursing and midwifery school at Australia's
University of Dundee.
Loneliness: What Counts?
Does age make a difference in loneliness? Lauder's survey didn't
prove that.
The survey showed that loneliness was lowest for 18- to
19-year-olds and highest for people in their 40s, with the
elderly falling somewhere in between. But those results could
have been due to chance, so don't count on the 40s being a
particularly lonely decade.
In addition, retirees reported less loneliness than unemployed
people.
Length of time living in the area didn't matter. Neither did the
number of a person's social ties.
"Loneliness has less to do with the quantity of social
relationships than with the quality" of those relationships, the
researchers write.
Loneliness and Health
Loneliness has been linked to depression, heart disease, and
other health problems, note Lauder and colleagues.
But their survey didn't cover health problems. The researchers
also don't know which comes first -- loneliness or those other
conditions -- or how loneliness might hamper health.
Lauder's survey amounts to a one-time snapshot of loneliness. It
doesn't show if participants were just having a bad day when
they took the 30-minute telephone survey or if they'd felt
lonely for a long time.
Even so, there's no need to let loneliness run (or ruin) your
life. Forging new social ties or deepening existing
relationships could prove rewarding at any stage of life.
SOURCES: Lauder, W.
Journal of Clinical Nursing,
March 2006; vol 15: pp 334-340. News release, Wizard
Communications.
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© 2006, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved. |
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