Loneliness is already a matter of public health. We have more and more evidence that animals help us to placate it

In recent years, we have seen how loneliness has become a problem with numerous ramifications, including toilets. The “male solitude epidemic” is one of the faces that has given more to talk, but loneliness also affects other sectors of the population. And small details can help, if not to solve it, perhaps at least to relieve it.

Pets. Domestic animals They can help To placate the feelings of loneliness, as a new study has observed. Interestingly, the study key is not in the company that they could offer, in themselves, these animals, but in their ability to boost and facilitate social interactions between people.

The work was done in Australia and focused on two groups notoriously susceptible to this problem: older people and international students. The team found that animals could be useful to facilitate the interactions between these two groups, improving the well -being and health of both.

“We find that older adults and international students experienced a significant decrease in feelings of loneliness and a significant increase in their health. The presence of living pets in particular helped break the ice and facilitated conversations between participants,” stood out in a press release Em Bould, co -author of the study.

The cost of a silent epidemic. The loneliness It can impact us In different ways, not only in our well -being, but also in our physical and mental health. Loneliness can accelerate our cognitive deterioration and has also been linked to lower life expectancy.

Pilot project. The study was based on a pilot project in which 30 elderly people participated in different residences of the Australian state of Victoria, as well as 11 international students. For 18 weeks, participants held periodic meetings, of one hour every week, in which various leisure activities linked to animals were carried out. There were also animals, and robotic versions of these.

Some of the participants in the pilot project (six older people and 10 students) also participated in the evaluation of the program and subsequent study. These participants completed several surveys and also participated in a semi -structured survey.

Measuring loneliness. Measuring loneliness is not simple, but there are some tools dedicated to this, such as the scale of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), the one used in this analysis. The team also evaluated the health status of the participants, through an instrument of 5 dimensions-Europe.

The evaluation was positive in both dimensions. The team responsible for this observed both a decrease in the sunny index and an ascent in the health index. The details of the study were published in an article in the magazine Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice.

Fight loneliness. The fact that in an era that stands out for advances in communication technologies La Soledad has acquired such dimensions is a sad irony. However, the important weight that loneliness can mean about our State forces us to take the problem very seriously.

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Image | / Alec Favale