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In the US alone, tens of thousands of incarcerated people are in long-term solitary confinement, with devastating and lasting effects on cognitive and mental health. A crueler version of those experiments is continually underway in prisons across the world. People routinely report confusion, changes in personality, and episodes of anxiety and depression. This kind of experiment, and less extreme isolation periods such as those experienced by spaceship crews or scientists working in remote Antarctic research stations, has offered glimpses of some of the cognitive and mental effects of sensory and social deprivation. By the five-month mark, he was reportedly so desperate for company that he tried (unsuccessfully) to befriend a mouse. Meticulously documenting the effects on his mind over those 205 days, Siffre wrote that he could “barely string thoughts” together after a couple months. In 1972, French adventurer and scientist Michel Siffre famously shut himself in a cave in Texas for more than six months-what still clocks in as one of the longest self-isolation experiments in history. “We really need others to survive.” The cognitive effects of prolonged social isolation But now more than ever, it’s important to study the effects of social isolation, and potential means to mitigate it, says Stephanie Cacioppo, a social neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist at the University of Chicago. The sort of isolation people are experiencing right now is unprecedented, and is compounded with other pressures, such as fear of disease and financial strain. It’ll be years before researchers understand whether and how measures enacted during the pandemic play into any of these risks. “We are seeing a really growing body of evidence,” says Fancourt, “that’s showing how isolation and loneliness are linked in with incidence of different types of disease with premature mortality.” Alongside myriad connections to poor physical health, including obesity and cardiovascular problems, a range of possible effects on the human brain have now been documented: Social isolation is associated with increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia, as well as mental health consequences such as depression and anxiety. These figures are concerning to public health experts, because scientific research has revealed a link between social isolation-along with negative emotions such as loneliness that often accompany it-and poor health.
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Surveys in the UK, meanwhile, show that half a million people over the age of 60 usually spend every day alone. According to European Union statistics, more than 7 percent of residents say they meet up with friends or relatives less than once a year. Even before COVID-19 began its global spread, millions of people were already what researchers consider to be socially isolated-separated from society, with few personal relationships and little communication with the outside world. This project and others like it underway in Australia, the United States, and elsewhere aim to complement a broader literature on how changes in people’s interactions with those around them influence their biology. Between March 24 and the middle of June, the study had recruited more than 70,000 participants to fill out weekly online surveys, and in some cases answer questions in telephone interviews, about wellbeing, mental health, and coping strategies. She and her colleagues rapidly laid the groundwork for a study that would track some of the effects of lockdown in real time. “We felt we had to start immediately collecting data,” Fancourt says. They realized it wouldn’t be long before the UK followed suit. Before Johnson’s late-March announcement, the team had been watching as Italy, and subsequently other countries in Europe, began closing down public spaces and enforcing restrictions on people’s movements. In more normal times, Fancourt and her colleagues study how social factors such as isolation influence mental and physical health. Stephanie Cacioppo, University of Chicago