Is loneliness a stage of life, a generational thing or a problem of our era?

Penny - Population expert

Based in New Zealand, Penny primarily looks after our Kiwi clients but also lends her expertise to the Australian context. Penny has extensive experience as a Communication Manager in Local Government and has a degree in Business and Communications. She also brings a breadth of generalist management experience in fields as varied as research, civil defence, project and event management, marketing and training. Penny’s knowledge combined with the .id tools help clients work with their communities to empower grass roots decision-making, advocacy and grant applications, and focus on strengthening council-community relationships. Penny has a rural property and enjoys growing and eating food and wine, which she runs, walks, bikes or swims off, when she’s not in the art studio.

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4 Responses

  1. I always read and enjoy your blogs Lailani but this one is just astounding. Government and social planners – take note. Social isolation and loneliness cannot be ignored.

  2. Hamilton McNicol says:

    Thanks Lailani, this really is important stuff. Do you know of any stats that represent these issues in Australia? I’m sure we are struggling with this also, but would be interested to find out how we are similar and different.

  3. Hi Hamilton,
    there has been some great recent research in Australia looking at loneliness. The Australia Institute and Dr David Baker published “All the Lonely People” – a 2012 paper examining the demographic profile of loneliness in Australia – see https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/hilda/Bibliography/Other_Publications/2012/Baker_All_the_lonely_people.pdf
    Baker also developed an Index of Social Support – checkout his discussion on volunteerism as a remedy for social disconnection.

    The Australia Institute and Michael Flood also released “Mapping Loneliness in Australia”
    ( http://tai.org.au/documents/dp_fulltext/DP76.pdf ) in 2005

    The data for these research papers was sourced from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which is funded by the Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) and conducted by the Melbourne Institute for Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne.

    In my post I also touched on the psychological implications of loneliness and while this last link is not Australian, I think that there are some fascinating insights into the behavioural implications of loneliness in this Psychology Today piece “Lets talk about loneliness and isolation in the linked age” – https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/201402/lets-talk-about-loneliness-alienation-in-linked-age

    Freud and Oprah Winfrey in the same article !

  1. December 5, 2015

    […] found out I am a member of the lonely generation and after reading this blog about population I agree with her conclusion – loneliness is the symptom of our individualistic society – just […]

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