Psalm 102:7 · Subject · Loneliness
Loneliness and Health
Medical reviews pool the cohort research on what loneliness and social isolation do to the body and the mind.
The Hebrew verb behind the lone bird of Psalm 102:7 stands in only three verses of the Bible.
I lie awake; I am like a lone bird on a housetop.
- Books
- Psalms, Proverbs
- Hold in memory
- Proverbs 17:22
Summary
Scripture holds the body and the soul together, and its laments describe the lonely with the body's signs of grief. Long-term medical studies find that people with fewer social ties, and people who feel lonely, die earlier on average and suffer more heart disease, stroke and depression. The research stands as corroboration of what Scripture shows, on Scripture's ground.
- Loneliness is the felt lack of company and social isolation the actual lack, and the research measures the two apart.
- The studies observe people over time, so they show that loneliness and poor health go together and leave the cause unsettled.
- A risk measured across a group cannot be read as one person's future.
Sorrow in the Bones
Psalm 102 and Proverbs 17:22 speak of sorrow that reaches the bones.
Loneliness and Health asks what medical research has found about loneliness and how its findings stand beside the laments of Scripture. The trial of loneliness reaches the body as well as the heart. The Bible gives the ground, a person made for company whose sorrow shows in his bones, and the studies stand on that ground as corroboration.
It gives the studies in one table with the numbers each found. It also reads the difference between isolation and loneliness, the link with depression and what programmes to relieve loneliness have achieved. It names the limits of what the studies can show.
For my days vanish like smoke, and my bones burn like glowing embers. My heart is afflicted, and withered like grass; I even forget to eat my bread. Through my loud groaning my flesh clings to my bones.These verses stand here because they come from the same lament as the lone bird of Psalm 102:7, so the solitude and the failing body belong to one prayer.
A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.The proverb stands beside the lament as the general rule of the wisdom books for what the psalm describes in one man.
Eight Studies Side by Side
Seven of the studies are reviews that pool earlier research.
The eight studies measured different things in different groups, so their figures are read row by row and never added together.
| Study | Who was studied | What was found |
|---|---|---|
| Death | ||
| Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton, PLoS Medicine, 2010 | 148 studies with 308,849 participants | Stronger social relationships went with a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival (odds ratio 1.50); the link was strongest for measures of social integration (1.91) and weakest for living alone (1.19) |
| Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris and Stephenson, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2015 | Studies published from January 1980 to February 2014 | The odds of death were higher with social isolation (1.29), loneliness (1.26) and living alone (1.32) |
| Wang and others, Nature Human Behaviour, 2023 | 90 cohort studies with 2,205,199 people | Death from all causes was more likely with social isolation (1.32) and with loneliness (1.14) |
| Heart disease and stroke | ||
| Valtorta, Kanaan, Gilbody, Ronzi and Hanratty, Heart, 2016 | 16 long-term datasets from high-income countries, followed for 3 to 21 years | Poor social relationships went with a 29 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease (relative risk 1.29) and a 32 percent higher risk of stroke (1.32) |
| Depression | ||
| Erzen and Çikrikci, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2018 | 88 studies with 40,068 people | "loneliness had a moderately significant effect on depression" |
| Cacioppo, Hawkley and Thisted, Psychology and Aging, 2010 | 229 adults aged 50 to 68 in Chicago, followed for five years | Loneliness predicted later changes in depressive symptoms, "but not vice versa" |
| Programmes to relieve loneliness | ||
| Masi, Chen, Hawkley and Cacioppo, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2011 | Studies of programmes to reduce loneliness | Randomized studies gave smaller effects than uncontrolled ones, and the most successful randomized programmes addressed maladaptive social cognition |
| Hoang and others, JAMA Network Open, 2022 | 70 randomized trials of programmes for older adults, with 8259 participants | Most programmes had a small effect, and the overall quality of evidence was very low |
Depression, Erzen and Çikrikci, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2018, Cacioppo, Hawkley and Thisted, Psychology and Aging, 2010, Programmes to relieve loneliness, Masi, Chen, Hawkley and Cacioppo, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2011, Hoang and others, JAMA Network Open, 2022
Isolation and Loneliness
Two reviews part on whether isolation and loneliness weigh alike.
The review of 2015 found no difference between objective and subjective measures, while the cohort review of 2023 found a larger figure for isolation than for loneliness.
The review of 2015 also found the link to death stronger in samples whose average age was under 65.
Loneliness and Depression
A study of older adults in Chicago asked which comes first.
John Cacioppo, Louise Hawkley and Ronald Thisted measured loneliness and depressive symptoms in the same people across five years, so they could test which change came first. The link held after they allowed for objective social isolation, a disposition to negative feeling, stress and social support.
A lonely person whose sorrow has become depression needs a doctor's care beside the prayers and company of the church, and neither takes the place of the other.
What the Programmes Found
Two reviews measured what programmes for the lonely achieve.
Christopher Masi and his colleagues measured the effect of each of the four kinds of programme that earlier reviews had named. The four kinds were improving social skills, enhancing social support, increasing opportunities for social contact, and addressing maladaptive social cognition. They judged their result consistent with current theories of loneliness and its causes.
The review of 2022 found the largest effects in long-term care for animal therapy and for videoconferencing, and it warned that those effects varied widely between studies and should be read with caution.
The Lone Bird of Psalm 102
The Hebrew of Psalm 102:7 calls the bird solitary.
The word rendered lone in Psalm 102:7 is a form of the verb badad (H909), which Strong's defines as "to divide, i.e. (reflex.) be solitary".
Charles Spurgeon, writing on the verse in The Treasury of David, said that "the sparrow is happy in company". Of a sparrow left the sole one of its kind, he wrote that "it would become very miserable, and sit and pine away".
The Limits of the Studies
Each study carries limits of its own.
Valtorta and colleagues call the studies they pooled longitudinal and observational. They ask for further studies to test whether programmes against loneliness and isolation can prevent the illnesses they measured. The review of 2015 found that the health of participants at the start of a study changed its findings.
The Chicago study is one sample of older adults in one city. The heart and stroke studies all come from high-income countries, and none of the abstracts names faith or church life as a measure.
The God Who Comforts the Downcast
But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the arrival of Titus,Paul wrote this of his arrival in Macedonia, when his body had no rest and he was pressed by conflicts and fears.
God's comfort reached him through the company of a friend.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESH lexicon (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the definitions of James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890)
- Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith and J. Bradley Layton, Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review, PLoS Medicine 7, no. 7 (2010): e1000316.
- Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris and David Stephenson, Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review, Perspectives on Psychological Science 10, no. 2 (2015): 227 to 237.
- Fan Wang and others, A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality, Nature Human Behaviour 7, no. 8 (2023): 1307 to 1319.
- Nicole K. Valtorta, Mona Kanaan, Simon Gilbody, Sara Ronzi and Barbara Hanratty, Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for coronary heart disease and stroke: systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal observational studies, Heart 102, no. 13 (2016): 1009 to 1016.
- Evren Erzen and Özkan Çikrikci, The effect of loneliness on depression: a meta-analysis, International Journal of Social Psychiatry 64, no. 5 (2018): 427 to 435.
- John T. Cacioppo, Louise C. Hawkley and Ronald A. Thisted, Perceived social isolation makes me sad: 5-year cross-lagged analyses of loneliness and depressive symptomatology in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study, Psychology and Aging 25, no. 2 (2010): 453 to 463.
- Christopher M. Masi, Hsi-Yuan Chen, Louise C. Hawkley and John T. Cacioppo, A meta-analysis of interventions to reduce loneliness, Personality and Social Psychology Review 15, no. 3 (2011): 219 to 266.
- Peter Hoang and others, Interventions associated with reduced loneliness and social isolation in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis, JAMA Network Open 5, no. 10 (2022): e2236676.
- Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, vol. 4 (1874), on Psalm 102:7.
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