Does psychosocial support actually help people live longer?

Whether psychosocial support extends life is an unsettled question in the general population, but the corpus identifies specific benefits for patients already in medical care. This is support delivered to patients already in medical care; it is not evidence that reducing loneliness in a general population extends life. Regarding general mortality, a meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies found that both social isolation and loneliness are associated with higher all-cause mortality, with a larger association for social isolation (pooled effect 1.32) than for loneliness (1.14) (Wang, 2023). However, a single large study of older adults in England found that the loneliness association did not survive adjustment for objective isolation (Steptoe, 2013). The Wang (2023) pooled loneliness estimate includes cohorts with varying adjustment; not every study adjusted for objective isolation. This establishes a mortality signal for loneliness without settling whether it is independent of isolation. Most mortality meta-analyses exclude deaths from suicide and other unnatural causes, so pooled estimates may be conservative. Some figures on this topic are not yet verified in this corpus and have been left out.

Sources

  1. Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010 — Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review Read the source
  2. Holt-Lunstad et al., 2018 — Why Social Relationships Are Important for Physical Health: A Systems Approach to Understanding and Modifying Risk and Protection Read the source
  3. Holt-Lunstad J et al., 2015 — Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review Read the source
  4. Hanlon et al., 2024 — The relationship between frailty and social vulnerability: a systematic review Read the source
  5. Wang F et al., 2023 — A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality Read the source
  6. Donovan et al., 2020 — Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Review and Commentary of a National Academies Report Read the source
  7. Perissinotto et al., 2012 — Loneliness in Older Persons: A Predictor of Functional Decline and Death Read the source
  8. Steptoe et al., 2013 — Social isolation, loneliness, and all-cause mortality in older men and women Read the source
  9. Mehrabi et al., 2024 — The temporal sequence and reciprocal relationships of frailty, social isolation and loneliness in older adults across 21 years Read the source