300,000 people in Sweden live in loneliness

An estimated 300,000 people in Sweden live alone – without friends, family members or acquaintances with whom they regularly interact.

The advocacy organization SPF Seniorerna is one of the actors now actively working to break the social isolation of older people.

The Swedish National Board of Health (Folkhälsomyndigheten) has attempted to map loneliness and has concluded that it is very widespread and most common among young adults, the elderly and people with disabilities, those on sick leave or unemployed.

– I am used to living alone. Sometimes I feel talkative, I used to call a friend of mine and say I’m talkative and we would talk for half an hour. But now she’s dead, so I have no one to call, Margareta, 91, tells SVT.

– I have no one left, they’re all gone, she continues.

Using volunteers

It is estimated that ten percent of Swedes aged 75 to 84 live in social isolation, and eight percent of those aged 85 and over. This means that not only do they rarely see a friend or relative in real life, but they also have contact with one of them by phone or internet less than once a week.

Social isolation often leads to mental illness, and several projects are underway to break it. SPF Seniorerna, for example, has a three-year project using volunteers to reduce loneliness among the elderly.

– We are trying to break the social isolation that exists among older people by using other seniors as volunteers to meet people and help them out of their isolation, says Peter Sikström, Secretary General of SPF Seniorerna.

He believes that social isolation goes deeper than “normal” involuntary loneliness and explains how he has met older people who have told him that they have sometimes not spoken to another person for several weeks.