Tag Archives: loneliness

Loneliness becoming a modern epidemic

Family carers can feel lonely?

You’re not alone – more and more people are suffering loneliness. Lisa Salmon reports on a growing and worrying problem

WE ALL have days when we feel slightly alone. Our friends are busy, the kids are away, nobody’s responding to your texts or calls. But this is very different to feeling deeply, inconsolably lonely. Loneliness is a growing problem, in a modern society that spreads people further and further from their family roots and compels them more and more to interact with technology rather than real people.

Loneliness is not a bug with a technological solution

Helping elderly people to use the internet is a good idea. But let’s not mistake broadband connections for social ones

Shar

‘Anyone who has spent time with elderly people knows the real issues are much more complex.’

In the UK, four out of 10 over-65s do not have internet access. At a time when so much of our lives is conducted online – the payment of bills, access to information – that should be a real source of concern about potential social exclusion.

But does this mean that by widening internet access, elderly people will feel more socially connected? Or, even, more radically, as a new report suggests, could this be a solution for loneliness in old age?

Minister prescribes New Year’s resolution to combat loneliness

January, not Christmas, can be the loneliest time of the year, warns Norman Lamb, the care minister, as he urges people to make a New Year’s resolution to help an older person

 

Norman Lamb is urging people to make a special New Year’s resolution to combat loneliness

Britons are being urged to make a special New Year’s resolution to help an elderly person as part of a Government drive to combat a national “epidemic” of loneliness.

Norman Lamb, the care minister, took the unusual step of recommending a specific resolution to the public, warning that January, rather than Ch

ristmas, is often the loneliest time of the year for many people.

It comes after Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, spoke out about a “forgotten million” older people left without any regular social contact – something he described as Britain’s “national shame”.

The Daily Telegraph has been supporting the NHS “Winter friends” campaign, in which people sign a pledge to help isolated elderly people in practical ways.