As as a reply to the study that Sunnybayes was referring to (Brummett et al.), I'd like to point out a few things that, at least for me, invalidates the conclusion.
First, think about this:
The population that was studied was a number of merely 430, in which all were suffering from coronial heart disease. This automatically makes me wonder: If the tested number of people was multiplied, by say, a thousand, and furthermore was consisting not only of CAD patients but of all kind of people - sick or fully at health from all over the world - would the result be the same?
Next, let's simulate answering the quiz that was assigned for the population of the study.
List the names of people who:
1) You like to talk to and do things with
N/A. (Actually I like talking to most people, be it those in the market queue or people on message boards. Since I travel a lot I don't have any static friends and thus cannot list any names.)
2) Have invited you out during the last 4 weeks
N/A.
3) You can borrow things from and ask favors of
N/A. (I just don't like borrowing things. Since I'm financially independent I prefer buying the things and perhaps sell them if I happen to don't want them anymore.)
4) Could help you make a very important personal decision, such as taking out a big loan, deciding to move, or choosing a new car
N/A. (I use Internet message boards to write about the problem I'm facing, in the rare cases that I can't figure it out on my own, and when I do I actually don't care WHO answers, just about the answer itself.)
5) You could talk with and who would understand you if a very close friend or relative was extremely ill or had just died
N/A. (I don't have any very close friends and the only relative I have left lives on the other hemisphere and speaks a language which name I can't even spell.)
6) Would talk to you, encourage you, and make you feel better about youself when everything goes wrong and you feel down and discouraged and even doubt your own worth
N/A. (I use self-hypnosis mp3's and NLP.)
These faked answers, all being N/A, puts me in the "isolated" category. But let's say I'm a backpacker, a traveller by soul and heart, who interacts with people all days long while sitting on trains or walking the cities, having no static home and thus don't care about making static friends. In other words I'm falselly categorized and now we know that at least one of the 430 studied is not rigid.
That is my point, however stated in a quite oversized and extreme way since I don't have anything better to do this Sunday afternoon. Studies based on self-report measures ALWAYS carry some misleading data.
Finally, the study doesn't answer HOW or WHY it is so, that socially isolated patients suffer from higher risk of dying. It does however state that ONE friend is enough. So the interesting question is: What does having this friend give me, that I can't manage to get by myself. Is it some kind of chemical reaction or other physiological transformation? A feeling or emotion? A state of security? If you'd be able to point out the reason why - IF so (see my above points) - socially isolated people suffers from higher risk dying, then you could ponder on whether you could replace the source of that (the friend) with something else. For instance let's suppose the health creating substance originating from the friend, is just a feeling of security. Then you could go about creating that feeling through religions practice or something else, eliminating the demand of having a social network. Or if it's physiological, perhaps this is an issue for future pharmacologists?  |