The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century Audiobook (Free)

In today’s world, it is more acceptable to be depressed than to become lonely-yet loneliness is apparently the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. Based on the 2004 General Social Study, one out of four Americans talked to nobody about something of importance to them over the last six months. Another remarkable truth emerged from your 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living by itself today than at any point in the country’s history-fully 25 percent of households comprise about The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Hundred years of 1 person only. Within this crucial take a look at among America’s few remaining taboo subjects-loneliness-Drs. Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz attempt to understand the cultural imperatives, mental dynamics, and physical systems underlying public isolation.

In The Depressed American, cutting-edge research within the physiological and cognitive effects of sociable exclusion and emerging work in the neurobiology of attachment uncover startling, sobering ripple ramifications of loneliness in areas as different as physical health, children’s psychological problems, drug abuse, as well as global warming. Surprising new studies inform a grim truth about public isolation: getting disconnected diminishes joy, health, and longevity; increases aggression; and correlates with raising rates of violent criminal offense. Loneliness doesn’t apply only to one people, either-today’s busy parents ‘cocoon’ themselves by devoting most of their nonwork hours to kids, leaving short amount of time for friends, and other styles of social get in touch with, and unhealthily counting on the relationship to fulfill all social needs.

Like a core population of socially isolated individuals and families continues to balloon in size, it is even more important than ever before to understand the consequences of a tradition that idealizes busyness and self-reliance. It’s time to provide loneliness-a very real and little-discussed cultural epidemic with frightening consequences-out into the open, and discover a way to navigate the strain between freedom and connection inside our lives.