The need to seek and maintain interpersonal relationships is a basic need of all human beings. That is why the need to affiliate with others and to be accepted by them is as being as basic to our psychological well-being as hunger and thirst are to our physical satisfaction. In some cases genetic factors are behind this tendency to associate and interact with people.
For human beings, it is almost impossible to live a normal life without being able to engage in many complex social behaviors. The negative impact without being able to engage in many complex social behaviors is feeling loneliness.
Feeling lonely is normal; for some, it can be very frightening and destructive. At minimum, it hurts. Loneliness also can become a pervasive and chronic condition with serious mental and physical conditions that include:
- Social isolation
- Depression
- Substance abuse
- Poor sleep and appetite
- Suicidal thoughts and behavior
- Impaired immune and cardiovascular functioning
The treatment for loneliness is directed toward increasing the person’s social interactions as well as giving them the social skills and opportunities to do so. Some of these are:
- Group therapy for lonely people
- Community events for people who are or feel alone
Social support not only helps improve a person’s well-being, it affects the immune system as well, where the lack of social interaction can negatively lead to first signs of depression and anxiety. However, we are still not sure about what comes first, depression or social isolation.
It is highly appearing that our health is in some ways strongly dependent on other people. Social support and social interaction have a positive influence on human beings’ physical and mental health. It lowers occurrence of stress, depression, anxiety and also highly affects our endocrine-immune system. So at the end we can say People need People.
|
|
|