Loneliness can have a significant impact on our physical and mental well-being. Loneliness can increase depression and stress, resulting in higher levels of inflammation, which in turn increases the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Loneliness can increase the potential of self-harm and suicide.

Even though more people are connecting through social media, loneliness rates are rising alarmingly. Researchers believe that time spent on social media has reduced person-to-person connections and consequently enhanced feelings of isolation. Loneliness numbers were on the rise, but since the pandemic, burnout, stress and loneliness numbers have dramatically increased. Loneliness is now considered a public health emergency.

Loneliness is caused, in part, by uncertainty of employment, people struggling financially, an increasingly polarized politics, climate uncertainty, racial profiling, fear and distrust. Currently, 41% of U.S. adults are sometimes, usually or always lonely (CDC 2024).

The good news is that, following former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s 2023 advisory on the devastating impact of loneliness, more people are becoming aware of a loneliness crisis and seeking ways to reduce it.

On Thursday, Nov. 6, at NOAHCON 25, held at NYU’s Kimmel Center in New York City, Dr. Jeremy Nobel of the Harvard School of Public Health shared his efforts to demystify and humanize loneliness, reduce the stigma surrounding it, and offer observations and frameworks for addressing it.

“Loneliness is the perceived gap between our desired and actual social relations,” said Dr. Nobel. “Loneliness is a deadly serious mental health crisis. Loneliness raises the risk of death by suicide, particularly by men, raises the risk of heart disease, the No. 1 cause of death, by 29% and raises the risk of mortality of 24% of the people worldwide.”

Dr. Nobel believes that there are three kinds of loneliness: Interpersonal-psychological (Does someone have my back? Is there someone I can tell my troubles to?); Societal-Organizational (“Am I welcomed? Am I safe?”). And Existential-Spiritual (“Does my life matter? Am I disposable?”).

He said that a lonely brain drives lonely behavior. It can make a person hyper-sensitive to threat, non-rational/emotional, and impulsive. An example of the latter can include attempts to die by suicide, made riskier by the increased availability of guns. The real threat is what Dr. Nobel described as loneliness spiraling. Lonely people tend to pull back and reduce their connections with others. The outcome is that their feelings of loneliness increase, and they withdraw even further and may start acting differently.

As a consequence, their family, friends and associates may start withdrawing because they don’t know how to help, or they may begin to feel rebuffed. Thus, they start pulling back, which increases a person’s feeling of loneliness. The lonely person withdraws even further, as the cycle repeats itself again and again.

Dr. Nobel identified five territories of loneliness, spiraling, aging, difference, illness, modernity and trauma, all of which are cross-linked in multiple ways. He said that there is no silver bullet, no single thing that can break the cycle or cure loneliness, but there is a lot we can do to help people radically reduce their loneliness and gain control of their lives. He said, loneliness is a signal; our challenge is to identify what it’s asking us to pay attention to.

Our challenge is that there are complex, overlapping drivers of loneliness; thus, reducing loneliness will require a mix of approaches and will take time. Becoming active in one’s church or faith, in civic organizations like the Lions Club and Rotary, and volunteering in myriad activities are all terrific ways of helping people feel socially connected and improve the lives of others.

Dr. Nobel, who is the president of Project Unlonely and also of the Foundation for Art and Healing, believes that participation in the arts is an often-overlooked but increasingly appreciated means of addressing loneliness, an approach backed by research.

“Why has there never been a culture without art?” asked Dr. Nobel during his presentation as he exhibited a slide of a 20,000-year-old wall in a cave in Altamira, Spain, covered with hand prints. “Maybe art, and the thoughts, feelings, and storytelling it offers, connect us, and maybe connection helps us survive and thrive. The arts offer unique ways to engage, inspire, empower, and connect us.”

Dr. Nobel said all the arts connect us: the traditional four — dance, language arts, music, and the visual arts — and the big three — culinary arts, gardening and the textile arts. Arts research conducted by the Neuroarts has demonstrated that the arts can rewire our brains. The arts stimulate thoughts, moods, and feelings that change our brains, our bodies, and our behaviors … all impacting our health. Further, the arts encourage us to tell our stories and invite us to be part of a larger story.

The reality is that the arts can harm as well as heal. Not all art found in galleries, music in concert halls, or theater on stage, for example, is appropriate for a hospital or public health setting. The good news is that there are increasing opportunities for artists and arts managers to receive training so they can safely assist people, as well as board-certified creative and expressive arts therapists, when that level of care is needed.

Dr. Nobel’s Project Unlonely offers creative guidance and engagement at three levels: exploring over 150 short films designed to reduce loneliness stigma; offering free online activities for creating and connecting; and making research-backed workshops available in community settings. Arts activities that address loneliness can be provided in a wide range of settings, such as medical centers and clinics, community settings, housing, schools, libraries, museums, workplaces and places of worship.

These programs can be designed to help people gain social confidence, manage emotions, find meaning and quality of life, and build resilience. Already, for example, the Keene, Keene Valley and Lake Placid Public libraries offer a variety of activities for people of all ages, and Arts Center Lake Placid (Lake Placid Center for the Arts) offers a wide array of opportunities to connect through the arts.

For anyone wishing to learn more about training or program opportunities, they can reach me through the Lake Placid News or Dr. Nobel and his colleagues through the Foundation for Art and Healing (artandhealing.org), or purchase his book, Project Unlonely: Healing our crisis of disconnection.

(Naj Wikoff lives in Keene Valley and has been writing his column for the Lake Placid News since 2005.)