How Loneliness Can Infect Social Networks
A study demonstrates how lonely people can affect others around them. Earlier findings showed that happiness, obesity and the ability to stop smoking can also spread. Transcript of radio broadcast:
06 January 2010
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
A demonstration last May against loneliness in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Signs read in Portuguese "Tired of being alone," "Couple now" and "I want to be in love."Loneliness has been linked to depression and other health problems. Now, a study says it can also spread. A friend of a lonely person was fifty-two percent more likely to develop feelings of loneliness. And a friend of that friend was twenty-five percent more likely to do the same.
Earlier findings showed that happiness, obesity and the ability to stop smoking can also spread like infections within social groups. The findings all come from a major health study in the American town of Framingham, Massachusetts.
The study began in nineteen forty-eight to investigate the causes of heart disease. Since then, more tests have been added, including measures of loneliness and depression.
The new findings involved more than five thousand people in the second generation of the Framingham Heart Study. The researchers examined friendship histories and reports of loneliness. The results established a pattern that spread as people reported fewer close friends.
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