Does reducing loneliness reduce mortality?

The corpus contains very little direct evidence on whether reducing loneliness reduces mortality, and an association between social disconnection and death does not establish that reducing disconnection reduces risk. Both social isolation and loneliness are associated with higher all-cause mortality, though the association is larger for social isolation (Wang et al., 2023). A meta-analysis of 90 cohorts found pooled effect sizes of 1.32 for isolation and 1.14 for loneliness (Wang et al., 2023). However, these estimates come from cohorts with varying adjustment, and the loneliness association did not remain significant in one study after adjusting for objective isolation and baseline health (Steptoe et al., 2013). In a four-year study of 2,961 older adults, neither transient nor chronic loneliness predicted frailty progression, with odds ratios of 1.10 and 1.14 respectively (Chu & Zhang, 2022). Persistent loneliness was associated with a lower chance of recovering from frailty (OR 0.68), while short-lived loneliness was not (Chu & Zhang, 2022). Observational data from the UK Biobank showed that among people with obesity, those with a loneliness index of 0 had a lower hazard ratio for mortality (0.86) than those with an index of 2 (Zhou et al., 2024). This study did not assign people to become less lonely; participants at different index levels may differ in ways the model does not capture. Furthermore, the loneliness effect was weaker than the effect of social isolation (Zhou et al., 2024).

Sources

  1. Holt-Lunstad J et al., 2015 — Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review Read the source
  2. Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010 — Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review Read the source
  3. Wang F et al., 2023 — A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality Read the source
  4. 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
  5. Donovan et al., 2020 — Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Review and Commentary of a National Academies Report Read the source
  6. Steptoe et al., 2013 — Social isolation, loneliness, and all-cause mortality in older men and women Read the source
  7. Pantell et al., 2013 — Social Isolation: A Predictor of Mortality Comparable to Traditional Clinical Risk Factors Read the source
  8. Perissinotto et al., 2012 — Loneliness in Older Persons: A Predictor of Functional Decline and Death Read the source
  9. Hilliard et al., 2026 — Investigating relationships between loneliness, social isolation and health Read the source
  10. Chu et al., 2022 — Impact of transient and chronic loneliness on progression and reversion of frailty in community-dwelling older adults: four-year follow-up Read the source
  11. Zhou et al., 2024 — Improvement of Social Isolation and Loneliness and Excess Mortality Risk in People With Obesity Read the source