Page 24 - Lauren Lolo Spencer Issue

isolation, because I wanted to pull this issue out from the shadows. I wanted people to know they weren’t alone if they were struggling, and I also wanted them to know that this really is a public health issue. Because when people struggle with being socially disconnected, it raises their risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide and also increases the risk of heart disease and stroke and dementia and premature death. When you have a risk factor that’s impacting so many people, it’s time for us to address it as a public health issue.
Friedman: That was one of the things I was struck by in reading your advisory—the stakes of addressing it. I’m a psychiatrist by training, so certainly I’m aware of how clinical depression can affect health. But you’re talked about something broader than that. It might raise the risk of depression, for instance, but it can affect people even if they are not meeting criteria for a diagnoseable mental health condition.
Murthy: That’s exactly right. It’s a risk factor that impacts so much of our lives, not even just our health. It turns out that when we are struggling with being social-
ly disconnected, it impacts how we perform our work. We’re less creative, less engaged, less tied to our work, and that impacts our productivity in profound ways. It also impacts how our kids perform in school, and our level of civic engagement. It creates what I believe is a sense of division and polarization that’s been growing over the years. Whether you care about health, or creat- ing a community that is more unified, or having better productivity and better results in workplaces and schools, it turns out that building a more connected life helps in all those areas.
That’s why I see our connection with one another as part of what fuels us as human beings. It’s foundational to our lives, and building a more connected life in a more connected world strengthens that foundation. Every- thing we build on top of that, whether individual pur- suits or the organizations that society depends on, becomes healthier and stronger.
Friedman: I was additionally struck that the statistic that you referred to – that one in two people are affected by loneliness – is a pre-pandemic figure. Also, the word
24 ABILITY