Introduction: All The Lonely People

More than one in ten people suffer from chronic loneliness…

 Our cultures do little to recognise this alarmingly growing trend. In fact, chronic loneliness can become a disease that eats into the soul causing depression and deep psychological change. The chronically lonely person asks, “What’s wrong with me?” Why don’t I fit in? Why am I the odd one out?”

 We don’t talk about feeling lonely, as responses might vary from…”Join a club,” “change your attitude,” “you’re imagining things,” “it’s your fault,” “think positive.”

 Comments and attitudes such as these accentuate feelings of loneliness and isolation. The busy, socially successful person cannot possibly understand the feeling of being insanely lonely…why should they?

 There are many different kinds of loneliness: the loneliness of the elderly whose friends have passed, whose families now find them surplus to requirement, a burden, inconvenient, useless.