This week, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) introduced national legislation to address the loneliness epidemic.
“Loneliness is one of the most serious, misunderstood problems facing America today. It may not sound like a problem government should care about, but I believe it’s irresponsible for policymakers to continue ignoring this epidemic,” Murphy said in a press release on the legislation released Tuesday.
The proposed legislation, the National Strategy for Social Connection Act, would require the White House to have an Office of Social Connection Policy to advise the President and “work across federal agencies to develop effective strategies for improved social infrastructure and issue national guidelines for social connection similar to existing guidelines on sleep, nutrition, and physical activity,” according to the senator’s press release. Improving social connections in transportation systems, housing environments, and schools is a part of the act.
This legislation comes on the heels of the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community earlier this year.
“The harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished,” the advisory read. “We are called to build a movement to mend the social fabric of our nation…each of us can start now, in our own lives, by strengthening our connections and relationships.”
At Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference in Marina del Rey, Calif., in April, Murthy said loneliness was a public health crisis. It increases the risk of developing heart disease, dementia, and mental health issues, and its health consequences are comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
“The pandemic has had a number of invisible costs in our country, and the increase in loneliness, the increase in mental health strain, these are part of those costs,” Murthy said at the conference. Nearly 25% of adults 65 and older are socially isolated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“The data is clear about the risks to our physical and psychological health, though before the introduction of this act, we appeared stagnant as a nation to take this on,” Dr. Jeff Katzman, the Director of Education at Silver Hill Hospital, tells Fortune. Katzman studied human relationships and psychiatry and recently attended the Hull International Loneliness Conference in England.
“The concept of loneliness hasn’t been a true component of the mental health conversation—not part of the diagnostic lexicon, not a real target of prevention strategies, and evidence-based interventions lacking organization into a guideline for care.”
The success of this type of legislation will be seen in the ability to address loneliness across generations within systems and communities to instill a sense of belonging and trust, Katzman says.
“We need to consider those interventions that can help facilitate trust and assist individuals in abandoning practices of isolation that may have become comfortable yet dangerous and ultimately self-punishing,” he says.
The act would also ensure funding for the CDC’s research on the effects of social isolation.
