Help Is Other People: The Power of Social Connectedness

"If there's one finding in the psychological literature that warrants your most urgent attention, I'd argue that this is it: Social relationships are our most powerful psychological currency; they are the key to our psychological health. There is no "I" in "Self." The "I" is always in "Society." Human beings are social before they are anything else. Human interaction shapes our psychological landscape more than any other factor."

"Bang for the buck, social connectivity is the most powerful predictor of well-being and life satisfaction, and the link is not merely correlational. Social connectivity creates well-being. Social isolation, by contrast, has been convincingly linked to higher mortality risk from all causes, on par with other well-established risk factors for mortality, such as smoking or alcoholism. In 2017, psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University and colleagues summarized the literature on the effects of social connectedness to conclude that,"

Social connectedness is a primary determinant of psychological health, exerting strong causal effects on well-being and life satisfaction. Human beings are fundamentally social; social interaction sculpts psychological functioning more than any other influence. High-quality close relationships and the subjective feeling of social connection are associated with lower all-cause mortality and reduced incidence of various disease morbidities. Social isolation increases risk of death from all causes at magnitudes comparable to smoking or alcoholism. Lack of social connection causes measurable declines in key physical and mental health indicators. The power of connectedness also appears in psychotherapy, where relational factors shape therapeutic change and outcomes.

Read at Psychology Today