RED FLAG

When Nicholas Phillips was a 13-year-old student of Ardenne High School, one of his classmates drew a picture and presented it to him. The drawing showed Phillips hunched in a corner in the classroom, his head on the desk as he slept, away from everyone else.

He remembers being quite unnerved seeing himself from that point of view, but knew it was a true representation of his state at the time. He was a lonely teenager from a dysfunctional family, who had no friends, and was frequently bullied.

“I was always sad, always sad. The only thing I wanted was somebody to talk to,” he said in explaining the loneliness he felt at the time.

As luck would have it, that drawing prompted a conversation with the classmate, who expressed genuine concern about his state of being. This, he said, was the beginning of his initiation into a brotherhood that “saved his life”.

“If it wasn’t for them, I would have committed suicide a long time ago,” Phillips told The Sunday Gleaner, matter-of-factly.

Phillips’ story of the significance of forming human connections correlates with the findings of a recent study that revealed that feeling lonely or socially isolated can cause an earlier death.

The research, which was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, a monthly journal dedicated to the best research into human behaviour from across the social and natural science. The study was conducted by a team from the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at Harbin Medical University, China, and in collaboration with the Quzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China.

It is a meta-analysis of 90 studies conducted by a team of that had examined the links between loneliness, social isolation and early death among more than two million adults. Study participants were followed for anywhere from six months to 25 years.

It concluded that people who experience social isolation have a 32 per cent higher risk of dying early from any cause. Participants who reported feeling lonely were 14 per cent more likely to die early than those who did not, the research found.

“When people are isolated and have very little social interaction, they produce chemicals that literally can damage the heart,” Dr Garth Rattray told The Sunday Gleaner, agreeing with the findings.

“I had a patient who was 104 at the time COVID hit. She couldn’t see her friends any more, she couldn’t go to shop any more, she couldn’t do all these things [or] go to church. She was stuck at home and she aged rapidly. She is weak, frail, and now I am worried about her sudden depreciation in health,” said the medical doctor.

The study defines social isolation as what occurs when someone has an objective lack of contact with other people and can involve having a limited network or living alone. Loneliness refers to the subjective distress people feel if there is a discrepancy between the quality of social relationships they actually have and what they want.

Rattray shared that younger people who experience extreme loneliness tend to engage in more “destructive behaviour” such as suicide.

Noting that humans are “wired for social interaction”, he said research has also shown that this can have significant health benefits.

“For some reason, people who have a strong family unit or extended family unit or a social life and interact with people all the time, they live longer than the average human being, and those in the higher age groups – 100s – they tend to have that kind of lifestyle,” he said.

“If you are going to go for a walk by yourself, you don’t tend to walk as much unless you have company. If you have company to do something, some physical activity, you’ll do it longer,” he noted as an example.

Positive interactions beneficial to health

Psychologist Dr Leahcim Semaj asserted that the link between loneliness and social isolation is something that has been well documented. They have been known to result in a range of health issues such cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diminished immune system capabilities, depression, and anxiety, he noted.

“We’re not really clear exactly how it works, but we know that it is related to increased stress. The more time you spend by yourself and such, you have more unhealthy behaviour – poor diet, lack of exercise, … you’re just sitting in the house watching TV doing nothing, and you spend so much time doing nothing so your sleep pattern is thrown off,” he said.

“The TV and cable was my best friend at one time,” the now 34-year-old Phillips recalls. “I don’t go outside, I don’t talk to anybody; I was an only child. Once I get home [from school], I don’t say anything or do anything until I leave for school the very next day,” he said.

At one point, he said he also began smoking and drinking alcohol to distract himself from the loneliness he felt. And it was the friendships that he was cultivating that shielded him from addiction.

“Once I brought some cigarettes around my friends and dem ask mi, ‘Wah you a do wid dat?’, seh, ‘Dat a waste man ting. Dat a nuh you’,” he said.

He said that he ended up throwing it away, and was introduced to healthier ways of combating his mental health struggles.

“I learned how to play chess [and] I was more physically active in sports,” he said. “They (friends) were everything to me. They were my lifeline, they were the ones that kept me from going into the streets and doing what I shouldn’t have been doing,” he reflected.

Barrington Senior recalls a time when he, too, had a wider social network.

Now 68 years old, he fondly recalls his active life as a construction worker travelling all over the island for jobs.

But seven months ago, the retiree was diagnosed with myeloma – a cancer of the blood. Between his chemotherapy sessions and travelling into Kingston on the bus from his Old Harbour, St Catherine, home, Senior said his days are punctuated with moments of loneliness that he is learning to cope with.

“It kinda awkward,” he said “Sometime you need somebody to assist you with certain things.”

He started chemotherapy a month and a half ago, and has so far done two four-day streams.

But the perceptive elder shared that getting older and dealing with the social isolation that follows is a change he foresaw and was prepared to accept.

“Mi keep myself busy. Mi watch di news and read di [news]paper and mi go church a couple times,” he said.

Independence versus interdependence

Psychologist Semaj noted that traditional Jamaican society had an “inbuilt” sense of community, which the advancements in technology, though beneficial in some areas, are slowly eroding.

“All the things that we call convenience now have diminished the social life that we had. Many of us don’t go bank no more. But back then, it’s like you go every month and so on and you go to your favourite teller, and during the transaction, you have small talk and conversation, but now that is gone,” he said.

He believes that deliberate efforts to broaden one’s social network can remedy this.

“Everybody complains about they’re alone. But whether you’re in a yard, a tenement yard, an apartment complex, or in a gated community, your neighbour next door [could be] lonely, too, so reach out,” he said.

The need for human interaction is one that Father Sean Major-Campbell also sees as critical. But he laments that too often emphasis is placed on independence instead of interdependence.

“I have seen individuals who would have benefited from establishing even a weekly contact with a caregiver in preparation for the likelihood of a full-time caregiver context,” he said. I believe loneliness may be a pandemic. And I do not mean living alone. I mean living selfishly and without the awareness of the necessity for social connections,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

Pointing to scripture that states that a man who isolates himself goes against wise judgement, Major-Campbell, rector of Christ Church in Vineyard Town, Kingston, is encouraging people to actively seek and participate in social groups to lessen their chances of falling into loneliness.

“Church involvement and spiritual connections with others may also help to bridge the gap, where people make the effort to share walks, teatime, and playing games,” he said. “Meeting to share time with others over a cup of soup or coffee long before retirement can make a positive contribution to addressing concerns around loneliness.”

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com