When people talk or write about loneliness these days, it often sounds as if they were referring to Covid-19. An unhealthy, dangerous and sometimes even deadly virus (if we believe the Dutch king at least). Indeed, besides the fact that loneliness is just quite uncomfortable and can, as such, really diminish your quality of life, it seems to entail all kinds of negative consequences for mental and physical health (at least if it is long-lasting or if it occurs very frequently).
In this blog, I will, piece by piece, provide you with scientific information about loneliness – what it is, whether it is an issue, where it occurs particularly often, when and why people can feel lonely, and how they manage to make it more bearable or resolve it. Indeed, as a loneliness researcher, I have not only read much scientific literature and conducted studies about loneliness, I have also talked to more than 40 people from India, Egypt, Israel, Bulgaria, and Austria about their experiences of loneliness. You can find their insights in the many different film clips on this website, but I will also use some of their wisdom in this blog. You can decide to read all their quotes or to skip some of them, because they usually illustrate what I describe before or after.
