Relationship between loneliness and mental health
About 2 mins
Key Points
- People who often feel lonely are over five times as likely to experience severe psychological distress.
- Of people who report they often feel lonely, over one third also experience severe psychological distress.
There is a strong relationship between loneliness and mental health. While loneliness itself is not a mental health condition, feelings of loneliness have been shown to have negative associations with certain psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety, alcohol misuse and sleep problems, as well as worse physical health.
This chart shows the percentage of people experiencing severe psychological distress in 2023–24 depending on whether they often felt lonely or not.
People who say they often feel lonely are over five times more likely to experience severe psychological distress.
Of participants who report they often feel lonely, 39.5% also experience severe psychological distress.
Of participants who report they are not often lonely, 7.6% experience severe psychological distress.
The relationship between loneliness and mental health is bi-directional – feelings of loneliness can lead to mental health conditions, and mental health conditions can foster feelings of loneliness. While this chart shows the relationship between the two, it does not indicate a causal relationship. Over the past five years, both the number of people who often feel lonely and the number of people experiencing psychological distress have increased, with the latter having increased slightly more.
- The data presented here are weighted estimates from Understanding Society survey, a longitudinal survey of households in the UK.
- Psychological distress is measured using the GHQ-12 assessment tool – a recognised indication of a person’s mental health. It includes 12 questions relating to mood dysfunction, social dysfunction and loss of confidence. Each question has a four-point response scale. Responses are added up to give an overall distress score – people with a score of 20 or higher are classified as experiencing severe psychological distress.
- People are classified as often feeling lonely via both direct and indirect reports of loneliness. People are classified as often feeling lonely if they respond as such in either the direct measure, the indirect measure, or both. Including both direct and indirect measures of loneliness allows to account for variation in understanding of the term ‘loneliness’ and in willingness to admit loneliness directly.
- The direct measure asks: ‘How often do you feel lonely?’ The response options are ‘Often’, ‘Some of the time’ and ‘Hardly ever or never’. People who answer ‘Often’ are classified as often feeling lonely.
- The indirect measure uses three questions: ‘How often do you feel isolated from others?’, ‘How often do you feel left out?’ and ‘How often do you feel you lack companionship?’. For each question, responses are scored 3 for ‘Often’, 2 for ‘Some of the time’ and 1 for ‘Hardly ever or never’. Respondents with a total score of 7 or more are classified as often feeling lonely.
