Loneliness is on the rise in Germany - why this is dangerous for democracy and health

Political initiative - Loneliness is on the rise in Germany - why this is dangerous for democracy and health

More research, pilot projects in local authorities, broad social alliances to combat grievances - does this sound familiar? It sounds like the universal recipe used by federal governments to tackle urgent problems in the healthcare and social services sector. Sometimes it's about outpatient care for the elderly, sometimes about better networking between GPs and hospitals. And today it is about one of the most pressing issues of our time: the sharp increase in loneliness in our society.

The cabinet has just adopted a "strategy against loneliness" with more than 100 measures. What good ideas it doesn't contain: New chairs for loneliness research, the establishment of a nationwide "coalition against loneliness" made up of companies, trade unions, associations, initiatives, foundations, clubs or religious communities, model projects against loneliness in the 28 to 59 age group.

Loneliness is highly dangerous for health - and democracy

All of this is urgently needed, because loneliness is highly dangerous, not only for health, but also for democracy. People with extremely thin social networks are more likely to suffer from depression and diabetes in the long term, they suffer strokes and heart attacks more often and they die many years earlier. In other words, effectively combating loneliness would probably help save billions in healthcare expenditure in the medium term. But that's not all: chronic loneliness endangers the stability of liberal civil societies.

This thesis was formulated by publicist and theorist Hannah Ahrendt in her standard work "Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism". According to her, the spread of deep-seated feelings of loneliness was an important factor that paved the way for the National Socialist movement. Individual case analyses of the perpetrators of school massacres and terrorist attacks prove this: Loneliness often played a significant role. A recent survey of young adults by loneliness researcher Maike Luhmann from Bochum shows that lonely people are more likely to lose faith in democracy and are more inclined to conspiracy theories than those who are socially well integrated.

And it is precisely these young people who have been battered during the pandemic. Their social networks collapsed during the lockdown phases and many hid at home in front of their computers, for which a US psychologist invented the term "cave syndrome". Apparently, even after the pandemic, many have not yet recovered from the phase of state-ordered withdrawal: Almost one in seven teenagers and young adults in North Rhine-Westphalia feel "very lonely" according to a recent survey.

A wealth of initiatives, but no permanent funding

The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs' strategy paper is therefore highly welcome. Nobody could have anything against the proposed measures, and yet it has one drawback: the decision is not linked to binding cost commitments. So it is cheap. This is why this initiative is in danger of becoming a pipe burst. And this despite the fact that Germany is fundamentally in a better position than many other European countries. Fortunately, loneliness research has been on the upswing for some time now. There are more clubs, more choirs, larger charities, more volunteers, the third sector of civil society is very well developed.

A "Loneliness Competence Network" was founded under the umbrella of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Work and Social Pedagogy, and under "Offers" on the website you will find a large number of initiatives to combat isolation - from the voluntary nationwide telephone hotline "Silbernetz" for senior citizens to the nationwide neighborhood network nebenan.de and apps for younger people such as "helpcity", where people in similar life situations can exchange information anonymously.

So there is a veritable wealth of offers, there are numerous pilot projects. The only problem is that they are constantly running out of money. Instead of further pilot projects, long-term funding for existing initiatives and associations is finally needed.

Combating loneliness costs money. A lot of money. This is a painful realization from Great Britain, where the welfare state crumbled during the Thatcher era. British society is still suffering from the consequences of greater social inequality and higher poverty, both of which are driving factors for more loneliness. The state's influence on housing construction and the expansion of communal infrastructure and neighborhoods dwindled, and with it the opportunities for mutual social support and encounters. The state healthcare system, the National Health Service, was cut back.

However, the British made a virtue of necessity and invented "social prescribing", which could now serve as a model for Germany. The focus is on the often last regular contacts of the lonely, the GPs. If they suspect that the basic problem of a patient sitting in front of them is not actually the illness, but isolation, they open a form on their computer that can be filled out in a minute. They tick "loneliness", perhaps also secondary factors such as "high debt" or "substance abuse" and click on send. A so-called "link worker" then takes over on behalf of the local authority. After extensive counselling, they refer the lonely people to clubs, dance or painting classes and, if necessary, organize appointments for psychotherapy. However, people are often helped by the fact that someone takes them by the hand and leads them back into society in small steps.

Of course, social prescriptions would also be desirable for Germany. However, introducing them would require a major intervention in one of the most complex sets of legal regulations in our country: the Social Code. This is because loneliness does not have the status of an illness and there is no billing code for it. This is where a team of legal experts, not psychologists or loneliness researchers, needs to get involved.

The fight against loneliness will fail due to the debt brake

The urgency of involving German doctors in the fight against loneliness has long been recognized; a nationwide "Social Prescribing Network" was recently founded at the Charité. It is still in the process of finding suitable German names for key terms such as "link worker", says initiator and general practitioner Wolfram Herrmann.

In the Berlin-Lichtenberg district, they don't want to wait that long. Martyna Voß, founder and project manager of the Gesundheit e.V. association, has already introduced social counseling on prescription there, and many doctors send lonely people to her and her staff. Two local general practitioners even provide a separate room for social counseling in their joint practice. What has been chronically lacking in the past is - you guessed it - funding. The association has often been threatened with closure after funding ran out because the concept is not anchored in social law.

We can only hope that at some point the German government will realize that fine words are not enough if no money is forthcoming. That combating loneliness requires more than new model projects, a bit of research and more therapy places, which will predictably not be available due to a lack of psychotherapists. That there is an urgent need to combat poverty, to invest in social housing, schools, education and voluntary initiatives in order to firmly anchor this burning issue.

Unfortunately, there are well-founded doubts as to whether the current federal government, which is driven by the FDP and has to keep an eye on the debt brake, is capable of this foresight.

Read also:

The strategy against loneliness adopted by the German cabinet includes measures such as establishing a nationwide "coalition against loneliness" and funding new chairs for loneliness research at universities, aims to combat loneliness, a risk factor for heart disease and depression, as highlighted by Lisa Paus, an expert on the topic.
The federal ministry for family affairs' strategy paper on combating loneliness is a step in the right direction, but its lack of binding cost commitments makes it vulnerable to becoming ineffective, as highlighted by critics who argue that effectively addressing loneliness requires substantial financial resources.
The fight against loneliness is crucial for both physical and mental health, as well as for democracy, as noted by publicist and theorist Hannah Arendt, who argued that the spread of loneliness contributed to the rise of totalitarian movements.
The UK has adopted a "social prescribing" approach, where GPs can refer patients to social activities to combat loneliness, which could serve as a model for Germany, but implementing such a program would require major legal and funding changes, as noted by Wolfram Herrmann, an initiator of the German "Social Prescribing Network."

Source: www.stern.de