62 | March• 2019
BETTER TOGETHER
them, you can’t reach out to anyone,
and you tend to stew in your own
juice. And the more helpless you feel
about not being able to do anything
about it, the worse it makes you.”LONELINESS IS THE HIDDEN
epidemic of the 21st century, and
increasingly a subject of concern at
the highest levels.
“It’s not just the old
who are desperately
lonely. I’ve had letters
from young mums and
teenagers with dozens of
friends on social media
who still feel very alone
and very isolated in this
busy, hectic world,” says
Tracey Crouch, who was
the UK’s first govern-
ment minister for lone-
liness from 2017-2018.
She has first-hand
experience of the is-
sue, having suffered from feelings of
isolation following the birth of her
first child.
But the epidemic is of course
notconfinedtotheUK.Morethan
one-quarter of Australians feel lonely
foratleastthreedayseveryweekand
morethanone-fifthrarelyornever
feeltheyhavesomeonetotalkto
orturntoforhelp,accordingtothe
2018 Australian Loneliness Report.
IntheUS,asurveyamongtheover-
45s found that more than a third felt
lonely. And in Japan there is even a“It’s debilitating,” she says after a
pause. “You don’t want to leave your
home, because you’re ashamed of
how you’re feeling. Yet you don’t want
to be indoors because you’re on your
own, and you know no one’s going
to come walking through that door.
It’s horrible.” Helen feels the same.
“If you’re lonely, it sends you into a
depression, and you don’t see any-
one, you don’t talk to
anyone,” she says.
Helen was signed off
from her job for three
months when she was
finding it hard to cope:
she and her husband
both had health scares,
her daughter has a
long-standing medical
condition, she made a
mistake with her till at
work... “My husband
knew there was some-
thing wrong before I
did. So did my line manager. She said,
‘You’re not right.’ I said, ‘I’m alright.’
Like you do.”
Helen got to know that it’s possible
to be lonely in a family home. “My
husbandatwork,mysonatcollege,
mydaughterinbed...Ispentalotof
timejustlookingatthetelly.Which
doesn’t help.”
“Loneliness does you no good,” says
Chris, who lives on his own and has
had problems with alcohol and drugs.
“It’s a sort of spiral. Even though doors
are open, you can’t walk through
“Loneliness
does you no
good. You can’t
reach out to
anyone and
youtendto
stew in your
own juice”OPENING ILLUSTRATION: TAI11/SHUTTERSTOCK