Social prescribing: combating loneliness is everyone's business

It is fair to say loneliness is a painful reality in the general UK population, but particularly among older people. Loneliness is thought to be as bad for health as obesity and smoking (Holt-Lunstad et al, 2015), and with up to one-fifth of all UK adults feeling lonely most or all of the time, effective intervention measures are required that will help improve people's quality of life quickly. However, we need to appreciate what is driving loneliness to such proportions: first the society we live in is continually changing, and the digital reality has led to people being glued to their smart gadgets, which have become the new norm of communication, shopping and interaction with each other. Then, other underlying factors to trigger loneliness may be relocation, change in or loss of jobs and, what is most relevant to this article, death of a loved one. All these situations often cause a sense of emptiness and lead people to lose their purpose in life. Periods of ill-health, contracting infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, relationship breakdown, divorce and even unplanned retirement are all worrying factors.