Loneliness Can Kill You

Companionship as preventive medicine

Health studies have long shown that single, widowed and divorced people are far likelier prey to disease than married folk. Some examples: the coronary death rate among widows between 25 and 34 is five times that of married women in the same age group. At all ages, the divorced are twice as likely as the married to develop lung cancer or suffer a stroke. Among divorced white males, cirrhosis of the liver is seven times more common, and tuberculosis ten times more common.

Why should it be so? To Psychologist James J. Lynch, 38, author of a new book, The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness (Basic Books; $10.95), the answer is obvious: loneliness kills. Says he: "Loneliness is not only pushing our culture to the breaking point, it is pushing our physical health to the breaking point."

A specialist in psychosomatic medicine at the University of Maryland Medical School, Lynch argues that social isolation brings emotional and then physical deterioration. Boston Irishmen, he notes, have a far higher coronary death rate than their brothers left behind in the more closely knit culture of the old sod. Nevada, a freewheeling singles-oriented state, has a higher rate of death from heart disease than neighboring Utah, with its Mormon tradition of close family ties. One study showed that in Roseto, an Italian American community in Pennsylvania, there were only one-third as many heart attacks as in culturally diversified surrounding towns. The study's conclusion: unusually close family and community ties in this town helped keep down the number of heart problems. Says Lynch: "Medical practitioners must make people aware that their family and social life are every bit as important to health as dieting and exercising."

Voodoo spells, he says, often are effective in primitive cultures because they produce a social isolation that makes illness more likely, and religion has traditionally promoted good health by providing companionship and hope. The lesson for America's doctors, he believes, is that an old-fashioned bedside manner plays a crucial role in the recovery of patients. It may be counterproductive, he says, to send patients away with pills when what they need is human contact.

Lynch developed his theory while conducting a series of animal experiments that showed petting could produce "profound effects on the cardiovascular system of dogs." A similar result is found among human patients--even people in deep comas often show improved heart rates when their hands are held by doctors or nurses. Lynch's point is that medical personnel intuitively know the healing value of the human touch but sometimes manage to overlook the principle because it seems unscientific.

In fact, the author calls for a "medicine beyond science" and asks the question, "What can be done to help alleviate the spread of loneliness-induced disease in our society?" To Lynch, the search for short-order intimacy in group therapies and encounter and sensitivity training is a symptom of the problem, not the solution. The answer, he believes, lies in reaffirming the importance of the family and in caring for friends and neighbors. Says he: "Simply put, there is a biological basis for our need to form human relationships. If we fail to fulfill that need, our health is in peril." It is a traditional nostrum that Poet W.H. Auden put better: "We must love one another or die."

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