In the News (from The New York Times): “The report, in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is the largest yet to tease out the impact of loneliness on people in their later years. Geriatricians at the University of California, San Francisco, asked 1,604 adults age 60 and older how often they felt isolated or left out, or lacked companionship. The researchers were attempting to quantify the feeling of loneliness — a sense of not having meaningful contact with others, accompanied by painful distress. …

“Lonely older adults also were 45 percent more likely to die than seniors who felt meaningfully connected with others, even after results were adjusted for factors like depression, socioeconomic status and existing health conditions.

“The emphasis on meaningful connections goes to the heart of what loneliness is and is not. It is not the same thing as being alone: 62.5 percent of older adults who reported being lonely in this new study were married. Nor is it simply a paucity of social contacts. As has been observed many times, people can feel lonely even when surrounded by others if their interactions lack emotional depth and resonance.”

My Comment: Man is created as a social being and cannot provide himself with everything necessary, especially in old age, so anxiety fills his existence. But we can correct this only through changing our nature, by creating a friendly society that will affect everyone so when the time comes, a person will be in a healthy old age peacefully falling asleep in his last sleep.
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