Health and Loneliness
Human experiences of loneliness come from perceived deficits in social interaction. Loneliness first became a health concern due to its associations with increased mortality and functional decline, especially among elders. However, its increasing prevalence across age groups in the US calls for our health care system to pay clinical and ethical attention to loneliness as a common experience in American life. This theme issue considers loneliness as a key source of health vulnerabilities that remains underappreciated and provides insights as to how our health care system can more fully respond to the needs of patients with limited social networks.