Unwanted loneliness generates an annual cost that exceeds 14,000 million euros in Spain -1.17% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2021-, an amount that is the sum of health expenses or sick leave that is generated by not addressing these situations with preventive policies.
The figure of this cost is collected in an investigation of the State Observatory of Unwanted Loneliness (SoledadES) that is presented this Monday and that evaluates expenses such as medical consultations, drug use, productivity losses, reduced quality of life and deaths. premature births associated with unwanted loneliness.
The study has been carried out by a team of academics specialized in the measurement of social costs from the universities of A Coruña and Vigo based on a survey in which more than 4,000 people have participated, and has had the collaboration of Nextdoor, a platform that makes it easy for residents to connect online with people who live nearby to build relationships and experiences in real life.
The observatory, which started a year ago with the support of the ONCE Foundation and the support of the main social entities, has set a figure for this cost of not addressing unwanted loneliness with policies that address head-on these situations that affect more than 12% of the population in Spain.
More than 20% of people with disabilities live alone and 38% without wanting to, a loneliness that has the face of a woman -70%-, profiles that isolation due to lack of support condemns them to live between four walls, highlights the Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities (Cermi).
But in recent years, especially after the pandemic, young people have also joined. A report from the Comillas Pontifical University shows that almost one in three young people say they feel alone.
Among the most determining factors of loneliness is the forced fact of living alone, but aspects related to social skills or participation in the community also have an impact, according to a study by the ONCE Foundation that concluded that two out of three blind people they have suffered some degree of loneliness at some stage of their lives and 12% always feel loneliness.
Along with the lack of accessibility of environments, products and services or the extreme difficulty of exercising fundamental rights or support for personal autonomy, there is also the fact of living in environments with scarce resources, such as rural areas.
Factors such as the economic situation of the household, the low frequency of contacts with relatives, friends and professionals who help them also play a role.
The Spanish and European population at the end of the decade will have 25% of people over 65 years of age, which implies thinking about models of housing, urban planning and meeting places, in friendlier cities, the president of the observatory explained to Efe. , Matilde Fernandez.
In ten years, people in a situation of unwanted loneliness have gone from 9 to almost 12%, which in the case of people with disabilities rises to 23 percent.
"Loneliness is a subjective feeling of people, but the factors that produce loneliness are of three types: the absence of family, being left without friends and having a disability or illness that isolates that person," said the expert and former socialist minister of Social Affairs and Social Welfare between 1988 and 1993.
