Combating Isolation
In my clinical work with many different patients, I have been consistently impressed by the extent to which belonging in social groups and social networks, with its consequent feelings of attachment and belonging is such a powerful predictor of people's ability to deal with life's problems and feel satisfied with life in general.
Many studies have shown that sociable people who report feeling like they belong to more than one social group do remarkably better after a significant negative life event. A study done at Columbia University in 2005 looked at over 600 stroke patients and found that patients who were socially isolated where nearly twice as likely to have another stroke within five years as compared with those who had meaningful social relationships!
It seems that victims of a stroke who were cut off from others were the most likely group to suffer another stroke. This increased risk was far more robust that what most people think to be the traditional factors that would produce a secondary stroke such as having coronary artery disease, or being physically inactive, both of which increased the likelihood of a subsequent stroke within the next five years, but by only 30 percent. In addition, a study of 16,000 elderly people by the Harvard School of Public Health found that there is significantly less memory loss in seniors who are more socially integrated and more socially active as compared with less socially active seniors.
Clearly, there is compelling evidence that the psychological factor of isolation is as powerful a predictor of poor health as is the more common negative correlates such as smoking, obesity or high blood pressure. But we do not see the same emphasis on the psychological factor of feelings of belonging as we do heavily publicized medical evidence.
Some might ask if it is important to belong to more than one social group. The danger to belonging to one and only one group is that we put ourselves in a much more vulnerable position, very much along the adage of avoiding having all your eggs in one basket. We can readily see this in a person who is over-involved in his work, and who neglects his family and friends, and then suffers dramatically with the loss of his job; or a jogger who has no other involvements and then injures her knees and can no longer jog. She too would be more vulnerable to these negative consequences than if she had belonged to multiple groups.
Many years ago Oliver Sachs, the Neurologist at Columbia University, wrote "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1998)". Sachs noted that patients who suffered with severe neurological impairment were not necessarily worse off as a correlation of how severe the impairment was, but rather the extent to which the person maintained a coherent sense of themselves and connections to others. Herein, we see the seminal importance of attachments in protecting ourselves from the inevitable stressors in life. Clearly, having a sense of ourselves and social identity has a very important influence on our general health and well being. We are social beings and for humans, membership in groups seems to be a critically important part of who we are and what we need in order to feel like we are leading satisfying and fulfilling lives. Not only can group life inoculate us against threats to physical or mental difficulties, it can improve our overall feelings of well being with far fewer side effects than pharmaceutical options. Belonging seems to be vitally important. And developing these connections is worthy of the time and energy we must devote to establishing and maintaining our involvement.
February 2010
