Why Does Social Isolation Harm Mental Health? A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.

We often hear that social isolation and social withdrawal hurts our mental health and increases our risk of depression, but why? Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn why does social isolation harm mental health by exploring the psychological and biological changes that happen during social isolation, what causes it and most importantly, how we can help people experiencing social isolation. Ultimately, social isolation harms our mental health and increases depression amongst other mental health conditions, but why? That’s the entire aim of the episode. If you enjoy learning about mental health, clinical psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by How Does Ageing Effect Us? A Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology Guide to Ageing. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

What is Social Isolation?

Social isolation is when we’re cut off from contact with other people. We can cut off physically from others, but we can also be emotionally disconnected or cut off from other people during social interactions. This is a problem because as a species, humans are very social creatures and if any of us spend too much time alone then our next social interaction can feel exhausting or awkward, because we’re out of practice.

Building upon this, people can become intentionally socially isolated or this can be done unintentionally, but the results are the same. Prolonged periods of social isolation, a period when we feel cut off from others, still harms our mental and physical health.

As a result of, with our social brains being hardwired for social interactions, when we don’t get enough social connection, this negatively impacts our mental health as well as wellbeing. For example, social isolation leads to loneliness and increased feelings of anxiety, depression and our brains can change how they process emotions. Yet social isolation doesn’t only impact our mental health, it can impact our physical health too. For example, social isolation can cause increased risk in developing high blood pressure, weakened immunity, heart disease amongst other negative health outcomes.

Personally, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, and as even an aspiring educational psychologist I look at this, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about social isolation, like many others have. Back in my Neuropsychology of Ageing module during my MSc, we had an entire lecture on the negative impact of loneliness and how social cognition decreases during older adulthood. As well as there is a lot of truth in the old saying that loneliness is just as deadly as smoking or loneliness is like smoking a hundred cigarettes a day.

Loneliness and social isolation is that harmful to our mental health.

Furthermore, the reason why How Does Ageing Affect Us is the sponsor of today’s episode is because it deep dives into how and why loneliness occurs in older age. As well as how in clinical psychology, we need to adapt our therapeutic models to accommodate the unique challenges of older age to reduce loneliness, support the client and improve their mental health. For example, we need to factor in how the life transition, such as retiring, their children being grown and other changes that the client is going through will impact them. This is important for us to think about when talking about loneliness and social isolation because if you’re retiring and that was where you got most of your social interaction from, then retiring marks a massive loss of social connection. This might make you feel like they’re physically and emotionally cut off from others. Physically because you are no longer in the same place as your friends and other people. Emotionally because you might be struggling to adjust to retirement, this decreases your mental health and this ability to process emotions. Especially, because the social cognitive skills that social interactions require decrease anyway in older age.

Just a thought.

Of course I understand that social isolation is not exclusive to older adults, because when I was a young undiagnosed autistic kid, I always felt extremely alone in the world. This had an awful impact on my mental health. This is a reason why I mentioned that I think about social isolation as an aspiring educational psychologist. If a child is socially isolated in their life then this will negatively impact their ability to learn and thrive in education. Therefore, it can be useful to think about ways to reduce social isolation in a child or maybe a group of students and make the school system more inclusive for everyone to reduce the harmful effects of isolation on their mental health and education.

However, my point is that social isolation has a massive impact on our mental health whatever your age and this is important for aspiring psychologists to recognise, be aware of and consider how this will inform their clinical work.

Furthermore, social isolation causes people to experience a higher amount of work-related stress, have lower life satisfaction and they’re more likely to use drugs and alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism. This builds upon larger explanations of how social isolation harms our mental health because poor social support can make it more challenging to manage life’s stressors, deal with negative life events and any stress that they encounter.

In my experience, this is one of the reasons why it is critical for mental health professionals to have a good, supportive team around them. Not only at work but at home too. Since as much as mental health professionals need an ability to compartmentalise and keep the stressors of work at work and never bring it home. There will be cases that cut a little too close to home and you might bring some of that case home. For example, when I used to be a teaching assistant and something happened at school, I would rarely bring those concerns home because they would impact me profoundly. This is why it was useful for me to be socially connected with the amazing team in my former classroom at work, so we could support each other. As well as I was socially connected to my family so they could understand why I needed to focus on self-care and social connectedness that particular night.

This is just one example of how social connection can help us improve our mental health, and how social isolation can harm us.

A final introductory note on this topic, whilst I will try not to use the terms of social isolation and loneliness interchangeably because they are slightly different, it’s important to note the differences. Therefore, social isolation refers to being separate from others as well as lacking social contact. Whereas loneliness is a more subjective experience because a person can feel lonely and socially isolated from others even though they might be regularly around and have contact with others. Both of these terms can have immensely negative impacts on someone’s mental and physical health.

In the rest of the podcast episode, we’ll learn why these negative health outcomes happen amongst other topics.

Why Does Social Isolation Affect Mental Health?

The main reason why social isolation impacts our mental health is because social isolation causes changes in our mood, how our brain functions, our thought patterns and it changes our behaviour. All these behavioural, psychological and biological changes have a major impact on our mental health, and this is even more true if the social isolation lasts for a long time. As well as social isolation can change a person’s health habits so this can further decrease their physical and mental health. For instance, people who experience social isolation tend to have sleep problems, exercise less as well as consume more dietary fat. This can have a massive negative impact on a person’s mental and physical health because they aren’t eating the right food to feel nutritious and for their cognitive and physical processes to be working at their best. Their lack of sleep will impact their mental health and this will further harm their mental health.

I talk about it in another podcast episode, called How Does A Consistent Sleep Schedule Improve Our Mental Health. During the worse of my Post-traumatic Stress Disorder caused by my rape in 2024, the more tired I was and the worst my sleep was, the worse my mental health was. It wasn’t until I managed to sort out my sleep that I was able to improve my mental health, decrease my depressive symptoms and start living again. As well as this connects to social isolation because honestly, during my PTSD, I felt so alone, both physically and emotionally from others. I didn’t believe that anyone could understand what I was experiencing, my pain and my suffering so I struggled to relate to others, and because I couldn’t go outside, meet up with friends and more, I felt physically isolated too. This was a major reason behind my negative mental health as I explain in my books, I Am A Survivor, Not A Victim and Healing As A Survivor.

Another example is the social isolation might cause an increase in depressive symptoms and this could lead to laden paralysis, so it might make the person with depressive symptoms feel like it’s impossible to get out of bed. This has a knock-on effect for their poor eating, poor personal hygiene as well as this makes them feel even worse about themselves so it further exacerbates the negative mental health symptoms.

What Are the Signs of Social Isolation?

Whenever we meet a client as an aspiring clinical psychologist, they might not realise they’re experiencing social isolation, so it’s important that we’re aware of the signs of social isolation. This will allow us to gently and compassionately help the client to realise they might be experiencing social isolation, the causes and what they could do about it. Therefore, some signs of social isolation include withdrawing from social activities or events that the client used to participate in, the client has no one to talk or turn to when they need advice or help, they feel sad, rejected or lethargic.

Personally, during my PTSD, I experienced a lot of these symptoms, because I withdrew from a lot of activities that I used to enjoy. I stopped going to a lot of social groups because being outside would cause me to have panic attacks. I stopped wanting to see my family as much because my mind would twist it and everyone was a possible danger to me and I was scared of everything and every action and decision felt impossible to make. Everything just took so much energy, concentration and intent that it was so tiring.

Staying alone and isolated was just the result whether it was intentional or not.

My personal example above does highlight another sign of social isolation. A hypersensitivity to environmental stimuli.

Another set of signs of social isolation include spending a long amount of time alone each day with little to no contact with other people, rarely communicating with others by phone, video call or text as well as lacking close, intimate connections with others.

Here, I want to mention that the main difference between loneliness and solitude is choice and how happy you are to spend time alone. For example, there are some days when I am perfectly happy to not have much social contact with the outside world or even by text or phone calls, because I want to spend some time alone whilst I work or relax. This is normal. I know some people when they go on holiday, they simply contact their immediate family to say that they’ve got there and then that’s it for the next week. They simply want to relax on their holiday. You could argue that for those two weeks, the people on holiday have no immediate connections, they don’t communicate with others and they spend a lot of time alone with no real social contact each day. Yet that’s by choice, and in this fictional situation, they are not lonely. They are simply enjoying some solitude.

As a result, whilst we’ll apply this more directly to clinical psychology in another section, I want to take a moment to reflect on this information from an educational psychology viewpoint. If an educational psychologist is working in a school because of concerns about a child disengaging with their education because they’re dropping out of social activities, they’re alone throughout the school day and they seem to have no real connections at school. My first thought after gathering more information from the teachers, support staff and management would be to understand if this is actually social isolation first at all. If it is a social isolation difficulty so the child doesn’t have social contact in or outside of school then this would require me to do other work. I would probably have to involve the parents a lot more, but if it was only social isolation in school. For starters, I wouldn’t use the term social isolation if the child has friends and regular social contact outside of school, but I would be curious to see how we could make school a more inclusive and friendly place for the student so they could forge some social relationships. Also, the student had once participated in a bunch of social activities and events at school and then they stopped, I would want to find out why and how we could possibly help or “fix” the situation.

On the whole, I gave you that example to help you realise that if you know a little bit about social isolation or another psychological topic, you can apply it to your chosen area of psychology and start thinking about applying psychology in the real world to improve lives.

What Causes Social Isolation?

When we experience social isolation or when we’re supporting a client who is socially isolated from others, we have to look at the causes. Sometimes cases of social isolation will not have a clear cause or answer, but most of the time, it is clear why someone is socially isolated. For example, as I’ve mentioned before during the worst of my mental health after my rape, I was socially isolated because of my trauma responses and reactions, as well as social anxiety. Therefore, social anxiety can cause social isolation because social anxiety leads a person to experience intense fear regarding social situations. This means as a safety behaviour they will avoid social situations and in turn, this dramatically decreases their ability to form and maintain their social connections.

On the other hand, trauma can cause social isolation because us, trauma survivors, tend to isolate ourselves to cope with the sheer trauma of what happened to us. As well as myself and the majority of other trauma survivors tend to be scared or even terrified of being hurt by others again, and the Post-Traumatic Stress we experience can cause us to avoid social activities that trigger memories of the traumatic event. For instance, for a long time after my rape, I didn’t like the idea of going outside in case I saw a white fat man because I was raped by a white fat man. Just seeing fat men would cause me to experience trauma reactions, panic attacks and I would get really distressed. Therefore, if I knew there would be fat men at a given social event, I would avoid it.

Now that I’m writing it, I understand that this fear wasn’t plausible or realistic in the slightest but through the lens of trauma and my rape, it makes perfect sense and it’s understandable.

Another cause of social isolation is depression, because as we’ve spoken about before at length on the podcast, people with depression typically experience low mood, fatigue, hopelessness, loss of interest and pleasure and loss of motivation. This makes it next to impossible to get out of the house, contact others, go out to social events and so on. Over time this all leads to social isolation and this reinforces the negative mental health outcome through a vicious cycle.

Penultimately, physical illness can cause social isolation because if someone has a chronic health condition that impacts their mobility then this can make social activities very difficult, painful and extremely exhausting. As well as the associated stigma and shame that often accompanies chronic illness can make people with the conditions want to avoid social situations even more. If you want to learn more about chronic illness and how it impacts mental health, please check out my podcast episode, What is Chronic Illness for Psychologists?

Finally, stress can cause social isolation because when a person goes through a major life stressor, like a divorce or death of a loved one, they tend to withdraw from the world and social activities. As well as life situations like the loss of a job, retirement, financial problems and even positive stressors like getting married, going to university or having a child, can have massive impacts on a person’s sociability. This can lead to social isolation by mistake because a person just doesn’t have the time, energy or ability to maintain or form social relationships during these life events.

Clinical Psychology Conclusion: How To Cope with Social Isolation

As a result of me explaining and talking about the benefits of talking to a mental health professional as well as me explaining how aspiring and qualified psychologists can improve lives, break the cycle of social isolation and help people to resolve the emotional and mental health difficulties that cause social isolation a lot on the podcast previously, I am just going to briefly summarise or comment on it. One podcast episode you might want to check out to further explain how psychologists can work with people experiencing social isolation to improve their mental health is What is Behavioural Activation.

Another way to cope with social isolation is to look for ways to become more social, and this is one of the main principles of social prescribing as explained in my episode, What is Social Prescribing. Since if you check out your local community for events, social or volunteering opportunities then these can be great ways to help you connect and meet new people. As well as even if you only take one small step each day to reconnect or maintain a social connection then that’s’ better than nothing, and over time, these small steps really add up.

Penultimately, as I explain in my episode, What is Animal-Assisted Therapy, you could consider getting a pet because getting a pet can help to combat feelings of isolation as well as having an animal provides a lot of mental health benefits. For instance, improving your mood, lowering your stress and if you get a dog, then you might meet new people when you take it out for a walk.

Lastly, practising self-care can help you to cope with social isolation because if you create a routine that ensures you’re getting enough rest, eating the right food and doing a balance of social, pleasurable and necessary activities, as explained in behavioural activation. Then this can improve your mental health dramatically.

On the whole, coming out of social isolation does take time. It can take the support of a trained mental health professional, your friends, family and it can take a lot of effort from you to change. This is why it’s important to be kind to yourself, have self-compassion and it’s okay that you struggle to make and maintain friendships as an adult. Lots of people have the same difficulties as you, but please, don’t be scared to reach out for support, go to new events and be kind to yourself.

As a final tip, I just wanted to briefly recap what social isolation is and why does social isolation harm our mental health. Therefore, social isolation is when we’re cut off from contact with other people. We can cut off physically from others, but we can also be emotionally disconnected or cut off from other people during social interactions. Also, social isolation harms our mental health because social isolation causes changes in our mood, how our brain functions, our thought patterns and it changes our behaviour. All these behavioural, psychological and biological changes have a major impact on our mental health, and this is even more true if the social isolation lasts for a long time.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

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Have a great day.

Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading

Eres, R., Lim, M. H., & Bates, G. (2023). Loneliness and social anxiety in young adults: The moderating and mediating roles of emotion dysregulation, depression and social isolation risk. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 96, 793–810. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12469

Gorenko, J. A., Moran, C., Flynn, M., Dobson, K., & Konnert, C. (2021). Social Isolation and Psychological Distress Among Older Adults Related to COVID-19: A Narrative Review of Remotely-Delivered Interventions and Recommendations. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 40(1), 3-13.

Guarnera, J., Yuen, E., & Macpherson, H. (2023). The impact of loneliness and social isolation on cognitive aging: a narrative review. Journal of Alzheimer's disease reports, 7(1), 699-714.

Hämmig O (2019) Correction: Health risks associated with social isolation in general and in young, middle and old age. PLOS ONE 14(8): e0222124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222124

https://www.verywellmind.com/the-impact-of-social-isolation-on-mental-health-7185458

Iovino, P., Vellone, E., Cedrone, N., & Riegel, B. (2023). A middle-range theory of social isolation in chronic illness. International journal of environmental research and public health, 20(6), 4940.

Kumar, A., & Salinas, J. (2021). The long-term public health impact of social distancing on brain health: topical review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(14), 7307.

Luigi M, Dellazizzo L, Giguère C-É, Goulet M-H and Dumais A (2020) Shedding Light on “the Hole”: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on Adverse Psychological Effects and Mortality Following Solitary Confinement in Correctional Settings. Front. Psychiatry 11:840. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00840

Schrempft, S., Jackowska, M., Hamer, M. et al. Associations between social isolation, loneliness, and objective physical activity in older men and women. BMC Public Health 19, 74 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6424-y

Shen, C., Rolls, E. T., Cheng, W., Kang, J., Dong, G., Xie, C., ... & Feng, J. (2022). Associations of social isolation and loneliness with later dementia. Neurology, 99(2), e164-e175.

Umberson, D., Lin, Z., & Cha, H. (2022). Gender and social isolation across the life course. Journal of health and social behavior, 63(3), 319-335.

Vlachos, I. I., Papageorgiou, C., & Margariti, M. (2020). Neurobiological trajectories involving social isolation in PTSD: a systematic review. Brain sciences, 10(3), 173.

Wang, F., Gao, Y., Han, Z., Yu, Y., Long, Z., Jiang, X., ... & Zhao, Y. (2023). A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality. Nature human behaviour, 7(8), 1307-1319.

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