In today’s world, it is more acceptable to become depressed than to be lonely-yet loneliness appears to be the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. Based on the 2004 General Social Survey, one out of four Us citizens talked to no one about something of importance to them over the last half a year. Another remarkable reality emerged in the 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living alone today than at any stage in the country’s history-fully 25 percent of households consist about The Depressed American: Drifting Aside in the Twenty-first Century of one person only. In this crucial take a look at one of America’s few staying taboo subjects-loneliness-Drs. Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz attempt to understand the cultural imperatives, mental dynamics, and physical systems underlying interpersonal isolation.

In The Depressed American, cutting-edge research within the physiological and cognitive ramifications of cultural exclusion and growing work in the neurobiology of attachment uncover startling, sobering ripple ramifications of loneliness in areas as diverse as physical health, children’s emotional problems, substance abuse, as well as global warming. Astonishing new studies inform a grim truth about social isolation: being disconnected diminishes joy, health, and durability; increases aggression; and correlates with raising prices of violent crime. Loneliness doesn’t apply only to one people, either-today’s active parents ‘cocoon’ themselves by devoting most of their non-work hours to children, leaving little time for friends, and other forms of sociable contact, and unhealthily counting on the marriage to fulfill all cultural needs.

As a core people of socially isolated individuals and family members is constantly on the balloon in size, it is even more important than ever to understand the effects of a lifestyle that idealizes busyness and self-reliance. It’s time to bring loneliness-a very genuine and little-discussed sociable epidemic with terrifying consequences-out into the open, and find a way to navigate the strain between independence and connection inside our lives.