The Loneliness Project
2025 will be another big year for research. I’ve just finished a year-long Churchill Fellowship studying why chronic loneliness has become an epidemic across the Western world.
Last year I travelled across the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States studying best-practice interventions in countries who’ve already declared loneliness a public health emergency. Now to disseminate my findings.
My report is now published— including an exclusive series of 31 interviews with some of the world’s most isolated people. I hope it will become a catalyst for far-reaching social change here at home.
Report now available to download HERE
“We used to get 100 calls a month from the same three ladies in the one village, all in their 60s. We’d take the ambulance round and find them in a real state. Just not coping. But they didn’t need an ambulance. What they needed was company.”
— James Lewis, aged 62, Former paramedic, now Co-founder of Dogs for Health, UK
Recent Media
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The Australian Weekend Magazine
All By Myself - In a world with 8.2 billion people, there’s an epidemic of loneliness. What’s causing it - and can it be solved?
15 February 2025
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POST Newspaper
Technology created a recipe for loneliness - An article in the POST newspaper.
4 January 2025
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ABC Radio Perth - Mornings with Nadia Mitsopoulos
"It starts in the community" The scourge of loneliness and the novel way to deal with it.
11 July 2024
During the past 50 years, people of all ages, in all places, have embarked on a remarkable social experiment – for the first time in recorded history, great numbers of us have begun to live alone.
In Australia, chronic loneliness is at record levels amongst single young men, middle-aged divorced men, the bereaved and the elderly, especially women.
Why the exponential rise? There are some obvious reasons: we’re getting divorced more often, having fewer children and living longer. Covid threw these factors into sharp relief. And there are more subtle reasons at play — the ever-increasing digitisation of society, the rise of social media replacing face-to-face engagement and a corresponding and puzzling unravelling of connections within neighbourhoods.
This year, I have been travelling around the world studying effective community models for the treatment of chronic loneliness.
In my many years as a journalist and an advocate in Aged Care, I have witnessed first- hand the isolated and often invisible world inhabited by carers and the elderly.
And as a 24 year old, I was engulfed by loneliness after moving to a new job in Sydney. Home was a rented flat in an unfamiliar suburb. Work colleagues were indifferent to the new girl. On weekends, I became a lonely observer of other peoples’ happiness. In streetside cafes, I was the solitary figure contemplating the parade of couples and families. It seemed everyone but me took the comforts of belonging for granted.
The body understands severe loneliness as an emergency: it raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which leads to a rise in blood pressure and heart rate, poor sleep patterns, depression and cognitive decline.
The US Surgeon General has declared loneliness a public health emergency— worse for your heart than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increasing the risk of an early death by 26%. Put simply, a lonely heart is a broken heart.
In 2024, I have been researching in the UK, The Netherlands, Sweden and the US but my research always begins at home. The latest census told us one in four Australians are now living alone. We have become a lonely nation.
If this project speaks to you, or you know someone who might benefit from The Loneliness Project, please get in touch.
This year I have been interviewing a wide range of people who have found themselves isolated from their social networks. I’ve also been taking a series of portraits, some of which are featured in the video attached to this project. If you would like to share your story, I’d love to hear from you.