Year started: 2017

Loneliness Awareness Week is a week dedicated to raising awareness of loneliness. It's all about creating supportive communities by having conversations with family, friends or colleagues about loneliness. Loneliness is a natural human emotion - we are hardwired to need social connections. By talking about it, we can support ourselves and others.

Objectives

Whilst we’re seeing an increase in discussion on the subject, stigma remains and there are some key misconceptions that still need to be challenged. Ask anyone to picture a lonely person and most will imagine an older person living on their own. As such, we often rebuke and dismiss feelings of loneliness because ‘that doesn’t apply to me’. By identifying and acknowledging all the times that we have personally felt and experienced loneliness, we can start to change our viewpoint, accept it and understand how to take action to manage the feeling (and our social connections) in the future.

Scope

So much happens during Loneliness Awareness Week, the only limit is imagination! From coffee mornings and book clubs to walking clubs and art workshops, to neighbourhood bake sales and speed friending. There are designated chatty tables in cafes and pubs, businesses putting loneliness on their meeting agenda, radio stations having honest and open conversations about loneliness, laughter yoga, swing dancing, shared office lunches and cook-offs. A dedicated Connections Map lists all of the events and activities shared by contributors in relation to Loneliness Awareness Week.