Loneliness has been shown to harm health, but treating loneliness as a health problem shifts responsibility from society to health care, warns a new study from the University of Michigan, even though health care alone cannot rebuild social bonds.
This study social issueschronicles how chronic loneliness and social isolation gained prominence as a public health concern after research linked them to an increased risk of illness, death, and rising health care costs.
Previous research discussed in the current study estimated that a lack of social connection is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Another study found that social isolation, loneliness, and living alone each increased the risk of premature death by about 30%. A third report showed that beyond the physical strain, this experience can have an economic cost, costing Medicare an estimated $6.7 billion annually in elderly care.
These findings have led people to treat loneliness as an emergency. But I wondered, why do we consider an issue important only when it is connected to health? ”
Sophia Hiltner, UM PhD student
Hiltner interviewed experts and analyzed more than a decade of media, medical journal articles, and academic papers. She found that while linking loneliness to health lends legitimacy to the problem, it also creates what she calls a “logical leap”: the assumption that because the problem is related to health, the health system should try to solve it.
“Not everything related to health belongs to health care,” she says. “Doctors can test patients and connect them to services, but they can’t rebuild communities or reduce work hours.”
Hiltner, a predoctoral trainee in social demography at the Center for Population Research at the U-M Institute for Social Research, began researching loneliness after watching her grandmother become increasingly isolated in her later years. When she entered graduate school to study isolation in older adults, she discovered clinical trials of “loneliness drugs.” This experience raised questions about why loneliness is primarily framed as a medical rather than a social problem.
“After my grandfather died, my grandmother lived alone and there was very little order in her life,” Hiltner said. “It seemed like she didn’t have a lot of friends or activities. That made me think about everything that was going on in her life. It made me wonder about dynamics at the family level, as well as social policies that could help prevent situations like that.”
Treatment may lie outside the clinic
Hiltner’s research also shows that members of the medical community were initially unwilling to claim responsibility for loneliness. Instead, academic researchers, government health officials, and insurance companies pushed the issue into the medical realm.
“Defining loneliness medically risks excluding other ways of dealing with the problem,” she says. “Attention, time, and resources are limited. On the other hand, framing this as medical care can lead to more behavior than would have happened otherwise.”
Hiltner hopes the study will prompt policymakers to think about why they frame problems a certain way and consider upstream solutions.
“I would encourage people to reflect on the strengths and limitations of addressing problems through the health care system, look further upstream to understand how problems arise, and consider ways to intervene before problems occur,” she said. “Medical care can help, but it has its limits.”
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Reference magazines:
Hiltner, S., (2026) Medicalizing loneliness: Addressing social ills through medicine. social issues. DOI: 10.1093/socpro/spag034. https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article/doi/10.1093/socpro/spag034/8703869
