Part1: The Loneliness Epidemic: Unveiling the Health Implications of Social Isolation

In part 1 of this two-part series on loneliness, Dr. Geoffrey Hopkins, Senior Medical Director of Behavioral Health at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield explores the concept of loneliness and its impact on an individuals' overall wellness. He discusses the factors that disrupt social connections and addresses how to prevent its negative impacts on health and wellbeing

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to excel Us Blue Cross BlueShields Community check In. Each week we
cover a specific topic featuring excel UsBlue Cross Blue Shield experts. You'll get
to know our team as we discussthe latest in healthcare, health education,
and community health. Find us atexcel Us BCBS dot com and follow on

(00:25):
Instagram and Facebook. I'm Joelomonico andwelcome to the check in. We might
not think of something like loneliness asa thing that poses serious health risks,
but if feelings of loneliness aren't addressedor at least recognized, they can significantly
impact our overall well being. Todaywe have doctor Jeffrey Hopkins back with us.

(00:49):
He's senior Medical Director of Behavioral Healthat excel Us Blue Cross Blue Shield
and he's here to talk with ustoday about loneliness, how it affects us,
and the steps that we can taketo address feelings of loneliness when we
experience them. Doctor Hopkins is goodto see you again and welcome back to
the Community check In. Glad tobe back. Thank you. In addition
to being the senior medical director ofBehavioral Health that Excels Blue Cross Blue Shield,

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doctor Hopkins is also board certified inChild and Adolescent Psychiatry and Adult Psychiatry
by the American Board of Psychiatry andNeurology, and he's a member of the
Onondaga County Medical Society. We havea lot to unpack with this topic,
and it's something I'm very interested inlearning more about. So let's start by
identifying just some basics if we could. How do you describe or how is

(01:32):
loneliness described? Number one and numbertwo? I don't know if there's one
hundred percent accurate way of describing howit affects us, but maybe try to
pinpoint some of the things that weought to be aware of. Yes,
well, it's important to take astep back and understand that we are social
beings and our ability to connect toeach other as key and it's a fundamental
part of who each and every oneof us is. In fact, social

(01:55):
connection is one of the seven elementsof wellness, and when that is out
of balance, you can start toexperience loneliness. And when loneliness sets in,
you can really impact all of theother areas of your wellness. You
know, you're physical and your emotional. It's pretty common and that's a pretty
important thing to understand The Harvard GraduateSchool of Education conducted some research in twenty

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twenty one and they found that thirtysix percent of all Americans, including sixty
one percent of young adults and fiftyone percent of mothers with young children,
feel serious loneliness. Additionally, thePew Research Center in twenty eighteen was able
to find that at least one inten Americans feel lonely or isolated all or
most of the time. So it'sreally common. So what does it do

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well. It can affect us inall sorts of different ways. It can
affect our emotional health, our physicalhealth, and our ability to socially interact.
And it's important to also understand thatloneliness isn't just because you're not having
a lot of social interaction. Weall experienced loneliness differently, and some of
us could even have a lot ofsocial connectedness and still feel like being alone.

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So this is a little bit aboutit. That is one of the
things that I was most curious about. It's we have this term and you
might think you understand what it means. It might mean to one person isolation
as in being not around anybody else. You are alone, And as you

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mentioned, doctor, you can alsoexperience symptoms or feelings of loneliness and be
in the midst of giant social situation. You can be surrounded by a crowd
of people and yet still feel lonely. So let's dig a little bit deeper
on that about how someone might becomeor start experiencing what they perceive to be
feelings of loneliness. Right, Soit's a unique phenomena. We all experience

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loneliness differently, but there's some commonthings that can occur that can lead to
the development of loneliness. One ofthe big things that we would understands like
a major life transition. You moveto a new town or a new city,
you start up a new job,or a relationship ends. All these
things could disrupt your social routines andresult in these feelings of loneliness starting to

(04:14):
develop. And this this change canlead people to put the need to put
in more work to nourish those socialrelationships, which takes a lot of energy,
and if you're doing other things,you might not have the energy to
do it. Obviously, we canall understand that social isolation can lead to
loneliness. So that can occur justif you're geographically separated from people that you're

(04:39):
used to connecting with, or youmight have mobility restrictions, you might have
limited social opportunities, or sometimes wehave these required isolation like we had during
the pandemic. These barriers can allform and make it hard to make meaningful
relationships and leaving us feeling alone.It's important to remember that social isolation itself

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doesn't always lead to feelings of loneliness. Some people enjoy their alone time,
but even these folks need some socialinteraction. They just may need a little
bit less of it than others.Other things that can lead to loneness health
conditions, right chronic pain or disability. They can make it hard to engage

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in social activities because you're busy takingcare of your health or dealing with the
consequences of your health. Additionally,like if you have behavioral health conditions like
depression and anxiety that create like afeedback loop where you don't feel like interacting
with other people. Then you're moreisolated, then you feel lonely, and
then it goes back and feeds itself. Another thing that happens to a lot

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of us, especially as we getolder, we have caregiving responsibilities or families,
parents have caregiving responsibilities, and thesecan lead to isolation. They can
be very time consuming. Then theycan make it so you don't have a
lot of opportunities to engage in thatsocial connection that you need. And then
there are cultural and social factors,right when you are a new immigrant,

(06:08):
right to the community or to thecountry, that can make it so that
you're isolated. And certain social groupslike the LGBTQ plus community may have difficulty
locating social support networks and that canlead to an experience of disconnection from their
community and fuel loneliness. Technology.Well, we all think it's great,

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right, I mean, we're ableto communicate with each other so much better
than we were in the past.But believe it or not, excessive or
exclusive use of technology can lead tofeelings of isolation, and individuals may have
fewer opportunities to engage in that meaningfulface to face interaction if they spend excessive
amounts of time non social media andother virtual communication tools. And then there's

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personality traits. Right, we alwaysunderstand that we might have introvertiveness or shyness,
and this could predispose us to havinga trouble starting or initiating or maintaining
social relationships and that can make itmore risky for us to experience loneliness.
Doctor Jeffrey Hopkins is our guest onthe Community check In. You've senior medical
director of Behavioral Health that excel UsBlue Cross, Blue Shield. We're talking

(07:18):
about loneliness. This is actually thefirst of a two part series that we're
going to be doing on the topicbecause, as you mentioned a lot of
those things, Doctor, we're onlygoing to be able to really scratch the
surface on it because, as youmentioned, it is experienced in a multitude
of ways, and two different peopleare going to experience loneliness at different times
to different degrees because of different things. And you mentioned something in your answer

(07:44):
that I want to come back toto unpack a little bit more. The
seven elements of wellness is something thatyou talked about. I wanted if you
could say a little bit more aboutthat, because I'm not one hundred percent
sure that everyone's going to understand whatyou mean by that. So when we
try to figure out about wellness itself, it's commonly broken up into a wheel
of wellness has se seven elements.Obviously, our physical wellness makes sense,

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and then our emotional wellness, ourfeelings, our social connectedness or wellness,
then our intellectual or our curiosity wellness, our spiritual wellness, our occupational wellness
in our job or our profession,and then our wellness in the environment,
the environmental wellness. All of thesedifferent things need to be in balance for

(08:28):
us to have wellness in general,and one thing can be out of whack
and it can have a cascading effect. You know, we think that some
of these things operate in a vacuum, but they don't. And it's very
easy for multitude of things that getout of the get out of balance and
out of sinct, to cause largerissues either with our emotional health or physical

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health too. They can manifest themselvesin a lot of different ways. So
let's, you know, as we'retalking about loneliness, and because it manifests
in so many different ways and canimpact so many of our areas of wellness,
let's talk a little bit about howsomeone can experience loneliness, and because
it can manifest in a lot ofdifferent ways, let's bring it down to

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some of those elements of wellness andhow it impacts those elements of wellness.
Well. It can really have abig effect on your physical health. Believe
it or not, if you experienceloneliness, you're more likely to have high
blood pressure or heart disease or otherchronic health conditions. It can also lower
your immune system because we all knowthat when we have loneliness right, we

(09:35):
have chronic stress, and that canhave effects on the immune system and other
body systems. It can lead tounhealthy coping responses when we're lonely. Sometimes
we try to sell tooth and ifwe're not being kind to ourselves, you
know, we might have overeating orsmoking or alcohol or drug use. Additionally,
from an emotional health perspective, likewe touched on previously, chronically low

(10:00):
only individuals are more likely to developdepression and anxiety, so it can affect
your emotional health and it can evenlead to low self esteem in negative self
talk, which can then further fuelloneliness. And believe it or not,
loneliness can make it hard to thinkclearly when you have loneliness. It can
make it hard for you to havereally good memory to make very accurate decisions,

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and it can even make it toughfor you to modulate or control your
emotions so and maintain a positive outlookon life, so it can have a
lot of different really concrete effects onthe different areas of wellness for us.
One of the things you mentioned earlier, doctor Hopkins, is that you talked
about a feedback loop where one thingcan can loop back on another, especially

(10:46):
when it comes to I think maybewith isolation and how you know you're isolated,
so you're lonely, but your copingmasculinism is to continue to withdraw,
and that's a bad coping mechanism,you know. It seems that there's it
can be difficult to find a wayin when it comes to being able to
identify what maybe the trigger causes areand to be able for a person to

(11:11):
start working their way back out,because sometimes it can seem like loneliness creates
the shell around you and it's hardto find a way in in order to
be able to get a foothold tostart dealing with some of these aspects of
wellness so that you can work againstfeelings of loneliness. It's true, and
there's like two ways to handle this. One is to try to prevent it

(11:35):
from starting, and the next wouldbe what can you do about it once
it's happened. So you could logicallyguess, you know that what can you
do to try to prevent it fromstarting is really trying to nurture your social
networks. The same way that wemight think, Oh, I've got to
go exercise or I've got to eathealthy to keep my physical strength up and
to keep my body healthy, thesame thing goes for nurturing your social support

(11:58):
network and really trying to do thatwith the idea of preventing the development of
severe loneliness. That could be somethingsimple like really trying to talk with your
family members and connect with them ina social way, really taking time to
nurture your friendships or to develop thatsocial connection with your coworkers. Additionally,
you might even reach outside of workand family and make some community connections.

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That could be like going to groupsorganizations that have similar interest to yours,
maybe even like a sports team,book clubs, or volunteering. So all
of these things can happen by givingyou a sense of purpose and fulfillment,
and those can help to help toprevent loneliness and defeat isolation and that feeling
that shell around you. And there'sa there's a couple of two things that

(12:43):
you can do also inside your mind. Just one is to be mindful and
paying attention to the present moment andpracticing mindfulness and like being open and curious
and non judgmental about your current experience. And the other thing is being kind
to yourself, really practicing self compassionand not talking down on yourself and being

(13:03):
able to understand that, you know, when you have these small victories,
when you get the social support networkgrowing, to really recognize that and give
yourself a pat on the back forthat, those can be often some of
the harder things that a person cando for themselves. Doctor Jeffrey Hopkins is
our guests in the Community check Insenior medical director of Behavioral Health that excel
Us Blue Cross, Blue Shield,and doctor we cannot talk about loneliness today
without bringing in context from the lastfew years, the pandemic, the isolation

(13:28):
that so many of us experienced duringthat time. Now, it had an
effect, of course on social connectedness, and of course I would suspect you
may have seen people self reporting oryou know, talking about and expressing feelings
of loneliness has really dramatically increased inthe recent past. Well, the loneliness

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is few, the loneliness ends upbeing the thing that happens after we get
isolated, and then the pandemic lightlayers on additional stressors. Right, It
makes it so that we could beafraid or reluctant to get around other people
because we still know that infections canhappen. It can make it so that
we've had economic stressors. The pandemicgoes very very hard on many of us,

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and that leaves us feeling financially strained, and that lack of finances can
make it hard to engage in socialactivities that cost money. Right, And
also we may have experienced trauma andloss and have grief due to loss of
individuals from the pandemic, and thatcan make it hard for us to reach
out and rekindle friendships. So there'sall of these things that happened during the

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pandemic. And then again, aswe touched on before, it accelerated our
use of technology to stop the completeisolation. But then we may have developed
habits of overreliance on technology to havesocial interaction, which just doesn't the same
as face to face interaction. Solike, as a society, if we

(14:56):
can prioritize the need and the worthof social reaction and how it can support
our physical and mental health. It'sreally important to do that. Yeah,
I mean, you didn't mention it'stechnology brings us together finger quotes, and
yet can often be the biggest barrierto actually having meaningful and real connections.

(15:16):
And that's you know, when itcomes to preventing loneliness or working your way
out of loneliness, Really their barriersthere that's often seem invisible, and you
have to figure out maybe what thoseare to create some type of a plan,
even if it's just for yourself tobe how are we going to work

(15:39):
against this or try to prevent thisfrom continuing to isolate me further. So,
if we've already experienced loneliness, it'skind of settling in. One of
the very important things that we cando is we can seek support. It's
okay to talk to friends or familyor even a therapist about your experience,
and that sometimes even talking about itcan help reduce the impact of the loneliness

(16:03):
itself. We mentioned before. Beingpositive. Sometimes giving back to the community
even when you don't feel great yourselfthrough volunteering or other positive activities gives you
a sense of purpose and belonging,and that helping others really can improve your
self esteem and foster those meaningful relationshipswhich can help to reduce loneliness. We
talked about it before and I'm goingto say it again. Finding a hobby

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group, people that have similar interests, sports, other groups, other clubs.
It's a fantastic way to meet peopleand build relationships around you. Taking
care of yourself, being positive inyour self care, healthy eating, adequate
rest, regular exercise, practicing,mindfulness, and self compassion. These are

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all things that can help you feelbetter about yourself. So then you can
engage in those social activities and thentrying novel things, trying new things,
stepping outside out of your comfort zone. Even though it can be intimidating,
it can be a great way tomeet new people in build new relationships through
new common experiences. So again,while technology is great and it can really

(17:11):
help, relying on relying on ittoo much isn't great. But you can
also find social support groups and networksthrough technology that you can meet in person.
So there's a bunch of different thingsthat you can do to try to
combat loneliness. And if it reallygets bad and it becomes overwhelming, it's

(17:33):
important that you can seek professional assistance. You can talk to a mental health
counselor if you need to. Oneof the things that I think has been
a positive within the pandemic, atleast from my point of view, is
I think more people are willing wouldyou agree to make mental health and things
that have to do with different aspectsof their health, either mentally or socially

(18:00):
spiritually, that we're more willing tohave conversations about it, and maybe more
willing to be upfront about struggles thatwe might have instead of I think maybe
there's a part of us that wantto keep it hidden because it's a deep,
dark secret. Maybe that's something thathas given us a good platform and
a good space to be able tohave these conversations, even if they're just

(18:22):
amongst our peer group to start,And I think that being able to overcome
that natural reluctance to talk about whatwe're feeling, especially that it's negative,
and even being able to talk tosomething to each other and to seek assistance
for something that seems as easy tohandle as loneliness, but so deeply important.
So it's a very complicated issue thatit has like really significant negative health

(18:47):
impacts, and by not avoiding discussingit by being able to reach out for
help with your friends and family,maybe even your primary care doctor or a
mental health professional. And you know, it couldn't really be something that we
can overcome without letting it settle in. And it goes back to something we
talked about earlier in the program,doctor, is that you know, we

(19:07):
consider loneliness to be something that maybewe have an idea about, we understand
what it is. I am alone, I do not have others that I
feel that I'm making a connection with. Now that may be how one person
experiences loneliness as a broader general term, but there's so many different ways that

(19:30):
it can manifest itself that it reallyrequires you to potentially have a multi pronged
approach to how you're going to workagainst it or work to strengthen yourself so
that you don't feel it as often. Certainly we are all going to feel
alone or lonely at some time inour life. I think the tipping point

(19:51):
is how do you keep it fromhow do you keep it from being something
that you have to fight back againstas opposed to just living with day to
day. And again, it's reallyrecognizing that loneliness is not something that's a
failing on your part, or it'snot something that if only I just had
done that one thing. Fighting lonelinessis a multi pronged approach. It's something

(20:14):
that involves recognizing how important it isand what an impact it can have,
reaching out and spending your energy andtime nurturing social relationships because it's the same
thing as you would end up beingto give yourself that physical health boost and
then being able to find the waythe energy to overcome the natural reluctance to

(20:37):
try something new and to try toconnect with other people or to connect with
people that you might not have beenconnecting with for a while. So,
yeah, recognizing it, giving theenergy to it, and knowing that it'll
give you a reward and a boostas you feel better about it. Yeah,
and to know that technology, aswe mentioned a couple of times during
the show here, but I wantto come back to it. You know,

(20:57):
technology has done wonder full things forus. It has brought the world
closer together, and yet at thesame time, it's made all of our
worlds kind of smaller. It's almostmade them seem vastly huge, and the
connections sometimes seem very far off betweenothers. Sometimes even people that you can

(21:18):
be living under the same roof withyou can feel distant from at times because
we wind up being sort of involvedin our own small little micro worlds,
and we can feel very lonely beingin those small micro worlds. Taking the
time to revisit those connections you withyour family and friends and understand that it
takes effort to do it and it'sokay to do it for the purpose of

(21:41):
just connecting with each other. SoI think those are some really important points
I'd like to say, also,like for members of Excelist, Blue Cross,
Blue Shield, that we have behavioralhealth case managers who can provide support
and resources, and you can reachthem on the phone. You can dial
eight seven seven two two two onetwo four oh. That's eight seven seven

(22:04):
two two two one two four oh. If you're experiencing emotional difficulties due to
loneliness, you can also check inof course with your primary care physician or
you're a great resource in the startingplace, and then the government has some
additional information if you are interested inlearning more about loneliness or finding additional resources
or ideas about how what it isand how to combat it. You can

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go to NIA dot nih dot govslash CTC toolkit. It's the National Institutes
of Aging website and they have agreat program in information to help explain and
understand about loneliness. And just aswe have our final few moments here on

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the program this week, doctor Hopkins, loneliness is something you can affect anyone
at any time. It's not linkedto a particular age group. It's not
necessarily linked to someone's socioeconomic status orhow many people they surround themselves with or
see on a regular basis. Ithink this is one of the things that
when it comes to conversations about ourmultifaceted health, that this is one of

(23:14):
those great levelers. We can allexperience it at some time, and maybe
it's good upon each other to recognizethat you never know exactly what someone else
might be going through on any givenday, and maybe you could be that
one thing, that connection that helpssomebody break out of a cycle that they
can't break out of on their own. Being able to recognize that we all
experience it differently. Yeah, andeven if you're surrounded by people, you

(23:37):
could still feel lonely and being ableto reach out to somebody else to be
that connection point. The genuine abilityto connect with another person and listen to
them and also talk back and forthwith them in a real way can be
one of the most things and oneof the kindest things that we can do
for each other to prevent and combatloneliness. Doctor Jeffrey Hopkins is the senior

(23:59):
medical actor of Behavioral Health at ExcelistBlue Cross Blue Shield and as doctor mentioned,
there are resources that are available formembers of Excelist Blue Cross Blue Shield.
They can be reached by phone ateight seven seven two two two one
two four zero. You can alsofind another great information at NIA dot nih
dot gov slash CTC Toolkid. Thisis just the first part of our series.

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Doctor Hopkins will be back for morediscussion on this. We're going to
take an even deeper dive into itnext week, so I hope but join
us then. Doctor good to talkwith you and we'll see you next week.
Thanks you looking forward to it.Thanks for joining us on Community check
In, a presentation of Excellist BlueCross Blue Shield at iHeartRadio. Podcasts of
Community check In are available on theiHeartRadio app or wherever you find your favorite

(24:48):
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