TRANSCRIPT
Peter Gallagher lives in Melbourne.
He says being diagnosed with a chronic heart condition ten years ago was life changing, in more ways than one.
"Before I was sick in 2014, I was very active in my community and I can assure you my phone would ring at least a dozen times a day. And I'd be lucky now if it rings a dozen times a week. You do kind of end up just with this silence that's always around you."
What Peter is describing is the experience of loneliness.
It's essentially a constant feeling of not having the connection or companionship a person may want and need.
Assistant Minister of Health Ged Kearney says Peter's experience of persistent loneliness is unfortunately far from unique.
"It might surprise you to know that one in four Australians say that they feel lonely. And that is even worse in Victoria where it's nearly 30 percent. So nearly one in three people in Victoria say that they have experienced a sense of loneliness."
Those figures come from a charity known as Ending Loneliness Together.
They've released a report that outlines the extent of what the group's CEO, Associate Professor Michelle Lim, sees as a public health crisis for Australia - and indeed, the world.
"We now know that loneliness has serious health impacts on us and also increases our chance of having an earlier death. This issue is no longer seen as a soft issue. It's now repositioned as the next global health priority that we all need to address."
Some governments, like those in the UK and Japan, have taken official action.
The UK and the world's first Minister for Loneliness was appointed in 2018 by then Prime Minister Theresa May.
"We will create a new, dedicated fund that will see government working with charities, foundations, and others to stimulate innovative solutions, provide seed funding for community initiatives, and scale up existing projects. And all of this work will be overseen by our new Ministerial lead on loneliness, Tracey Crouch. She will be keeping the challenge of tackling loneliness firmly on the agenda of colleagues across Whitehall."
Australia hasn't followed that lead - but Ged Kearney says the Albanese government still intends to do what it can.
"This is something that we really do need to talk about. We need to make sure that people feel connected; they feel connected at work, at school, in their community... And these are things that the Australian government feel very strongly about correcting."
Some of the research from Ending Loneliness Together might present some clues for where to begin.
Their data indicates Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are loneliness hotspots for Australia.
Dr Lim says their research also shows a number of groups in the population - no matter where they are - are more likely to be persistently socially isolated.
"Young people we know are very vulnerable to navigating social challenges... And we do know other groups are also vulnerable. So if you have a chronic health condition... or if you have a mental health condition... Another finding that we did note was that people from CALD backgrounds were about 1.5 times more likely to experience persistent loneliness."
There are clues in other studies, too - about just who is persistently lonely.
Dr Vicki Gibbs is the Head of Research at the Aspect Research Centre for Autism Practice.
She says it's been repeatedly found that autistic people are more likely to be chronically lonely than the general population.
"We know that autistic people are stigmatised and discriminated. They're more likely to be excluded from school. They're more likely to have trouble getting employment. They're less likely to be participating in physical activities. And all of this means that they're not having the same opportunities that non-autistic people do."
hat is something that Josh, an autistic man, can attest to.
"It can just hit out of the middle of nowhere, and feel like you're a part of something here where you're not entirely welcome. That you're an outsider. It feels like a lack of community and it feels like a lack of belonging and a fear of rejection. And it's really hard to deal with that."
Josh says the reasons for this loneliness are complex - but it can often relate to the way neurodiverse people see the world - and how others respond to that perspective.
He says neurodiverse people often don't understand non-verbal social cues, and that has resulted in them being ignored or excluded.
"A sense of that loneliness comes from - all of us have undergone some deep form of betrayal, if not ongoing small betrayals. Where we trust someone and we believe the words they use and we realise only later it was not the way we thought it was... They're like, oh no, you didn't want to come to this. Or no, it's just us today. Don't worry, next time. And they didn't actually mean it. It was just an attempt to say, can't you pick up on those clues."
Josh also says the very environments that socialising often takes place in can be a challenge for some autistic people, who may be overwhelmed by the noise.
"It's okay to ask for that. It's okay to be different. Because the pattern out there is we just have to conform to this - for instance being comfortable in a noisy cafe and hanging out with a group of people. And there's a kind of ostracism involved in sticking your hand up and going, this is really hard for me; can we do it a bit differently."
Dr Gibbs has been part of a new study that's aimed to develop new ways of measuring this loneliness in autistic people.
She says while those who are neurodiverse tend to think about and take part in socialising in a different way - traditionally, studies on loneliness haven't necessarily taken that unique perspective into full account.
"Up until now there have been several studies looking at loneliness among autistic people... but the studies that have been done have been using measures that were developed for non-autistic people. So we weren't quite sure whether these existing measures actually capture the experience of autistic people around loneliness. There could be some unique aspects to it - and also whether autistic people were actually interpreting the questions the way non-autistic people do.]
Loneliness might commonly be thought of as an individual problem requiring individual solutions - like therapy.
But Dr Gibbs says they don't want solutions to fall just to individuals.
And it's an agenda Dr Lim is already on board with.
The Associate Professor says loneliness cannot be something a person fights alone.
"Perhaps it's about something that we aren't doing on the surface in our community as being more inclusive. So what is it that we can do to make those communities feel more belonged and included."
