Are We Lonely? How Loneliness, Disconnection, and Isolation Are Becoming the Silent Killer of First Responders with Jeremy Nobel

The Squad Room

Did you know that 15% of men say they have no close friends? None. 53% of women say they feel lonely at work. 17% of the general population say they routinely experience deep loneliness. What’s scary is loneliness is linked to our longevity and health. Going through life lonely is the equivalent of smoking nearly a pack a day.

Now, that’s not specific to first responders. Add in rotating shifts, working weekends, the hypervigilance roller coaster, and our physiological reactions to job stress and I think it’s safe to say that many cops – whether they admit it or not – are very lonely.

Dr. Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH, is on the faculty of both the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His new book, “Project Unlonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection” explores how loneliness takes root in our lives, how we as social creatures require deeper human connections than we’re currently getting, and what we can do to create more meaningful relationships.

As creator of The Foundation for Art & Healing, Dr. Nobel has become a prominent advocate for creative engagement and how it improves our lives, integrating that work into traditional medical care, as a path to healing as he has revealed that an important component of the healing process is engaging in creativity. Dr. Nobel graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University within the Science and Human Affairs program. He received his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania and completed his internal medicine residency at the Beth Israel Hospital, Boston. Board-certified in both Preventive Medicine and Internal Medicine, Dr. Nobel also holds Master’s Degrees in Epidemiology and Health Policy from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Loneliness seems to be an inevitable result of our modern world, and it is perhaps one of the harder things for us to admit we’re struggling with.

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A special thanks to our sponsors for today’s episode.

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