A recent Gallup poll says 1 out of every 4 men under the age of 35 reported feeling lonely.
Dr. Nik Allan with Ohio State's College of Medicine and the OSU Wexner Medical Center has researched this topic and developed a new type of therapy to help men sort out their emotions.
Dr. Allan spoke with WOSU Morning Edition Host Stu Osborne about his research.
Stu Osborne: What kinds of factors do these men say contribute to their loneliness?
Dr. Nik Allen: That's an interesting question. I'm not sure if men have necessarily been able to identify what contributes. I think a lot of males sort of are maybe more recognizing the feeling. So they feel lonely and they're not actually sure what is contributing. And I think that's in part because, and actually I get into this a little bit in my research. I think it's in part because they are in this world of multimedia and there's social media and there're all these ways of connecting with people and yet they don't feel connected. So, I think part of it is maybe a recognition that despite there being around so many people all of the time, they're not feeling that connection. And there's something off.
Stu Osborne: That perfectly leads into my second question here. Something that did stick out to me in the study is that these men say that they have a lot of connections on social media, but they have very few deep, meaningful connections. Is that kind of what you took away from it as well?
Dr. Nik Allen: Yes, I think that's exactly it. We've been doing some research on developing a treatment for loneliness using kind of common therapeutic techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy. And one of the things we're really noticing is loneliness really seems to be about more than just connection or just being around people. It really is about establishing those worthwhile connections. And I think part of that problem is sort of understanding yourself even and what kind of connections you'll find fulfilling.
Stu Osborne: Do you think the COVID pandemic had anything to do with maybe exacerbating it just because we were socially distant in person, but we were all connected via screens at that time?
Dr. Nik Allen: Yeah, I believe that the pandemic definitely played a role. I actually think it's probably still playing a role, you know, for a significant minority of people. Loneliness is related to social anxiety and fear of rejection. And so a lot of people probably got comfortable at home in the online world, and ironically, it sort of led to uh, them maybe becoming less comfortable in the real world.
Stu Osborne: You have developed this talk therapy, as you mentioned, part of the cognitive behavioral therapy. What exactly is this talk theory and how does it work with the people that are part of this study?
Dr. Nik Allen: A lot of treatments may talk about things like anxiety and depression, and those can still kind of be stigmatizing, especially for men. And so our treatment focuses on social engagement, and we try to frame it in a way where we're just trying to help people understand what are the barriers that have been constructed over the years that get in their way of engaging with other people.
Stu Osborne: Moving forward, what do you want to accomplish with this study? Like how do you wanna use this information moving forward?
Dr. Nik Allen: What we're hoping to do with this information is start to roll out and test this intervention at a larger scale. We want to see if we can use something like our six session telephone-based treatment to help people better engage in their communities. There are so many both physical and mental health positive outcomes that can come just from getting out there and getting engaged from being more healthy physically, but also to helping with your mental health as well.
Dr. Allen's research is part of the larger SOAR study.
