Parenthood is a gift that keep on giving: once you get your child through high school and into college, if that’s the path they choose, you’ve reached a milestone, but you’re not done – if you have a young adult or young adults in college, they may be isolated and lonely, and need your ongoing support to maintain positive mental health and wellbeing.
Thar’s true now more than at any time in the past. Consider this recent Surgeon General’s Advisory (SGA) one loneliness and isolation in the US: “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General during the Biden Administration, offers this assessment of the loneliness epidemic in the United States:
“Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death.”
That’s a sobering thought: isolation and loneliness are not only associated with negative emotional and psychological outcomes, but negative physical outcomes, up to and including premature death. In other words, with regards to isolation and loneliness, the stakes are high – and we need to find a way to support our most vulnerable citizens.
That includes young adults currently in college.
In this article, we’ll define what loneliness and isolation mean, offer the latest facts and figures on loneliness and isolation in the U.S., and close with five tips for supporting your young adult or young adults with mental health challenges associated with isolation and loneliness.
Are There Clinical Definitions for Isolation and Loneliness?
Yes and no. No, in that isolation and loneliness are not mental health disorders. Yes, in that mental health professionals have specific ways they define and discuss both phenomena. According to experts, a person is isolated if they:
- Only connect with a few people
- Lack a clear social role: friend, partner, teammate
- Avoid joining social groups
- Report infrequent interactions with others.
Now let’s talk about loneliness. According to experts, a person is lonely if they:
- Experience a difference between their social needs and their social experiences
- Identify a difference between their emotional needs and emotionally fulfilling experiences
- Report a persistent sense of emptiness
- Have a chronic, unmet need to connect with others
- Persistently feel unwanted while persistently wanting to feel wanted
Those definitions make logical sense, align with the way most of us understand isolation and loneliness, and expand our understanding of what isolation and loneliness mean. The sentence “persistently feeling unwanted while persistently wanting to feel wanted” is particularly poignant: no one wants their child, adults or otherwise, to feel unwanted – ever.
And when evidence shows a connection between isolation/loneliness and clinical mental health diagnoses, the gravity of the loneliness epidemic hits home:
Isolation and Loneliness: Impact on Depression, Anxiety, Suicide, and Self-Harm
Depressive Disorders/Anxiety Disorders
- Young adults: isolation/loneliness associated with increased risk of depressive disorders
- Young adults: isolation/loneliness associated with increased risk of anxiety disorders
Suicide and Self-Harm
- Adult males who live alone have 100% increased risk of dying by suicide, compared to adult males who don’t live alone
- Adult females who live alone show significantly increased risk of non-suicidal self-injury, compared to adult females who don’t live alone
A well-regarded study published in 2010 indicates the following:
“Social isolation is arguably the strongest and most reliable predictor of suicidal ideation, attempts, and lethal suicidal behavior.”
All the available evidence suggests we need to find productive ways to address and alleviate isolation and loneliness. We’ll offer our top five tips in a moment. First, let’s take a look at the scope of the epidemic.
The Prevalence of Isolation and Loneliness in the U.S.
The SGA uses facts and figures from a publication called “US Trends in Social Isolation, Social Engagement, and Companionship ⎯ Nationally And By Age, Sex, Race/Ethnicity, Family Income, and Work Hours, 2003-2020 to support its claim that we’re in the middle of an epidemic of loneliness and isolation that has a negative impact on young adults and their mental health.
Here are the key insights from that study. Between 2003 and 2020:
- Social isolation increased by 24 hours a month
- Household social/family engagement decreased by 5 hours a month
- Total time in social companionship decreased by 14 hours a month
- Time with friends/peers decreased by 20 hours a month
- Total time spent with family away from home decreased by 6.5 hours a month
- Overall social time with others decreased by 10 hours per month
Data also reveals these facts:
- In 1990: 25% of people reported having fewer than three close friends
- In 2021: 49% of people reported having fewer than three close friends
If having more than three close friends functions as a proxy metric for isolation and loneliness, then the evidence indicates that people in the U.S. are twice as lonely as they were thirty-four years ago.
What can we do about that?
How to Help Young Adults Manage Mental Health Challenges
We know how to help young adults with mental health issues: we do it every day of the week. At BACA, we prioritize family involvement in the treatment process, and understand the positive impact a supportive parent can have on young adults who experience mental health challenges. Here are our top five tips for what you, as a parent, can do to help your young adult while they’re away at college. We adapted this advice, in part, from material published by the Cleveland Clinic.
Five Ways Parents of Young Adults Can Support Mental Health
1. Identify Resources on Campus
Most college campuses provide a wide range of resources to help young adults in need of support for their mental health. If your child is overwhelmed by their classes and workload, you can find any classes, programs, activities, locations, and/or events designed to reduce stress and improve overall wellbeing. These may include:
- Counseling centers that offer formal and informal support for people with mental health challenges
- Classes on mindfulness, meditation, and yoga.
- Wellness and relaxation rooms that offer a safe space to reset and recharge.
- Activity centers/gyms that provide a dedicated space to engage in exercise and sports, which are associated with increased physical, emotional, and mental health.
- Greenspace and parks that can function as free, accessible, and easy ways to reduce stress.
- Support groups with peers facing similar psychological and emotional challenges.
2. Mental Health/Behavioral Disorder Accommodations
College students with a documented history of/presence of a mental or behavioral disorder can apply for similar accommodations to those they received during high school. In essence, this is a 504 applied to college. The law in the U.S. – the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 – requires any college or university that receives federal funding, which is almost all, private schools included – to accommodate students with documented disability.
These accommodations don’t work retroactively, but you can contact the disability office at the college, sometimes known as the office of accessibility or a similar name, and set up accommodations for upcoming semesters.
If the stress and pressure of academic contributes to the isolation and loneliness your young adult or young adults feel, accommodations are a structural approach to improving overall mental health and wellness.
3. Check In With Them Often
This is particularly important for young adults with mental health challenges who aren’t, and have never been, very social. If this describes your child, it’s important to recognize that you may have been their primary protective factor against loneliness and isolation.
While they absolutely do need to find social support among their peers, remember that if they didn’t have a large friend-group as an adolescent, and they didn’t make new friends quickly, it’s unrealistic to think that this will change overnight once they’re in college. Encourage them to find clubs and activity groups that increase their chances of making real connections with peers, but also provide whatever long-distance support they need. You can call, text, or video chat: all reduce loneliness and isolation.
4. When You Check In, Listen Closely
During your check-ins, it’s important to engage in active listening. What this means, essentially, is that you listen, first, with one goal: to understand. Here’s what not to do while listening:
- Figure out how you can fix a problem
- Think of the excellent advice you have to offer
- Prepare that advice while they’re talking
Keys to active listening include:
- Keeping eye contact (keep eyes on screen for virtual listening)
- Don’t forget to smile.
- Use encouraging, reinforcing and positive language when asked for a response
- Use empathetic language when appropriate
- Ask them to elaborate
In some cases, what young adults who feel isolated and lonely need – and have mental health challenges as a result – is someone to listen. When they feel hear, they may also feel seen and understood. This can pave the way for any advice you have in the future, and help them accept external support from others, per our next piece of advice.
5. Professional Support
Perhaps the most powerful thing you can do is all the legwork required to locate a provider who offers professional mental health support. That means arranging an evaluation, finding appropriate therapists, and setting up/paying for appointments. If a full psychiatric evaluation indicates the presence of a mental health disorder, they can commit to a treatment plan specific to that disorder. If an assessment doesn’t indicate a mental health disorder, they can still commit to connecting with a therapist or counselor to explore and resolve their feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Finding Help: Resources
First, call us here at BACA: no matter where your child is, we can help you in your search. Next, try these online locations:
- The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) maintains this treatment locator
- The National Alliance on Mental Illness maintains this treatment locator
- Also, the American Psychological Association (APA) maintains this treatment locator
- And finally, the American College Counseling Association (ACCA) provides this excellent virtual resource page
