Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a biweekly podcast from the American Psychological Association.

I'm your host, Caitlin Luna.

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Half of Americans today say they are lonely, and the average person reports having only one close friend.

Loneliness can also make us sick, contributing to heart disease, depression, suicide,

and cognitive decline.

Why is this happening and what can we do about it?

In this episode of Speaking of Psychology, I'm speaking with Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad,

professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, who's an expert on loneliness and social

connectedness. Welcome, Dr. Holt-Lunstad. Thank you. So first I wanted to ask, do we have a

loneliness epidemic and what trends are you seeing in your research? You know, that's a great question.

And I've certainly heard this term being used epidemic.

The Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. Surgeon General, has suggested that we have a loneliness

epidemic. So have leaders from multiple nations.

And even recently, I was attending a talk where someone from the World Health Organization

also referred to this as an epidemic.

And I get this question a lot.

And so I actually tried to look up the term epidemic to

determine what the definition is and whether this met the criteria for that or not. And of course,

most definitions out there refer to infectious diseases.

...