SEATTLE — We recognize substance abuse, tobacco and obesity as some of our major public health issues, but loneliness is increasingly becoming part of that conversation.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm a year ago, calling loneliness a public health crisis.
Murthy recently visited Seattle to reassert his message and to show what progress the U.S. has made in combating what has become a significant mental health issue.
Surgeons General have, in the past, placed warning labels on cigarette packs and lately, vape products to warn of the health dangers from using such products.
KING 5 asked Murthy what he would place on such a label for the loneliness epidemic.
"I would want to say two things: loneliness is bad for your health, but I really want to emphasize in the big print that social connection is good for your health," Murthy said.
It's a message he's emphasizing across the country, in our post-COVID pandemic and social media world: That a lack of human connection can endanger our health.
"People who struggle with the sense of being socially disconnected from each other, their risk of depression, anxiety and suicide, goes up. But their risk of heart disease and stroke and dementia also go up," Murthy said.
Murthy joined Washington Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah for the state health department's Public Health Connects video series in May.
"Wellness is not just health, it's well beyond health. We have to think about all of the inputs that come into really being well," Shah said.
The Washington State Department of Health's (DOH) Office of Healthcare Innovation and Strategy has launched its Power of Provider Initiative, which joins community-based organizations and community health workers to ensure the best care, according to a spokesperson.
The DOH also published a Washington-specific 988 website to help bring awareness to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Drs. Shah and Murthy continued the conversation at Seattle-based nonprofit Red Eagle Soaring, an organization that mentors Native youth, is a locale with particular significance.
"Many of our cultural traditions, including Native culture, have threads of social community embedded in them. It's something that's traditionally been valued; something that has been cultivated proactively," Murthy said.
Murthy added it's something that would be helpful for all of us to adopt and to remember it is not something only doctors can cure.
"This is a problem that requires all of us as family members, as friends, as community members, to step up and ask the question, how can I show up in the lives of people around me?" Murthy said.
A conversation over the 'loneliness epidemic': HealthLink
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy visited Seattle to reassert his message that a widespread lack of social connection has become a public health crisis.