The link between loneliness and mental health has been well documented. During the first lockdown when my housemate – a key worker – was out all day, I found myself alone for hours on end in our suffocatingly small first-floor flat. Some days looking at the news would leave me spiralling, other days, eyes bloodshot, all I could do was meticulously follow the news. No matter how many Zoom quizzes I did with friends, the deep and sorrowful pit of loneliness felt never-ending, and I was still one of the lucky ones.
“Isolation is a killer,” says CBT therapist Sarah Dees. “Isolation can cause depression, poor quality of sleep, impaired executive function, and accelerated cognitive decline. As well as increasing our stress levels, it can cause poor cardiovascular function and impaired immunity.” And while technology can make it feel like we’re finding that connection and community online, Sarah says the number of people experiencing loneliness is still growing.
Before the pandemic, A* from London was already dealing with anxiety and depression, and admits she was self-medicating “with drugs and alcohol like most mid-20s clichés”, but the pandemic made things much worse, and she had "never felt so lonely or low before".
“I think it was the first time I felt despair,” she admits. “Once the pandemic arrived, my ability to drown my sorrows in the pub four nights a week with people that made me feel less alone was swiftly taken away from me.” Before long, A found herself furloughed from work and unexpectedly stuck living with a couple.
“Watching a couple get to flourish in their relationship while I wasn't even experiencing human touch felt almost like a personal attack,” she continues. “In those moments I was extremely aware of how severely my mental health was deteriorating to, essentially, paranoia. I attempted to combat those extreme lows by going on three, four, five, six-hour walks.” But even then, the site of other couples on her walks became hard to grapple with. “I was so in my head about being alone and never being able to find anyone that I thought the world was basically shoving my loneliness in my face and rubbing it around a bit.”