(From Katy Couric Media) — U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has warned about the growing problem of loneliness for years. Even before the pandemic separated us from our loved ones, Dr. Murthy viewed our growing sense of isolation as a grave public health threat — on par with smoking or substance abuse.
He has famously compared a lonely life to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, in that both have been shown to drastically reduce your lifespan. And that’s not all: Loneliness has been linked to depression, suicide, heart disease, and dementia, Dr. Murthy tells Katie in a new interview. Across his two stints as Surgeon General, he’s written extensively about the loneliness epidemic and how we can begin to heal, including in his 2020 book Together and in a new op-ed for the New York Times. But today, he’s going a step further by issuing a Surgeon General’s Advisory on the topic, along with a national strategy to help more of us feel more connected.
“I’m asking people to recognize that our disconnection from one another is one of the most important foundational issues we are dealing with in society today,” Dr. Murthy says.
See her interview on why NOW is the time to fix our country’s loneliness problem by clicking here.