The coordinator of a European project running in several northern European countries explains to us what isolation and loneliness are and why it is important to overcome these situations.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Being isolated and feeling alone are two sides of the same coin.
00:05 But what's the difference, and what are their consequences?
00:09 To find out, we spoke to Elin Tegesund, coordinator of the Eye2Eye project in Norway.
00:14 Isolation, social isolation, is about the network you have, or the lack of network.
00:22 When we talk about loneliness, it's more this emotional or subjective feeling of being lonely.
00:30 So that's two different concepts, but they are also going together.
00:35 Loneliness is a reason for many health issues or health problems, and also mortality.
00:44 It can be diabetes, it can be heart failure, it can be COPD, it can be different illnesses.
00:53 When you feel lonely and you're also isolated, I think you will, in a way, make these illnesses worse.
01:02 And put you more into risk.
01:08 We were trying to combine both the public sector and the volunteer or the private sector.
01:14 And we also involved different companies and discussing solutions with them.
01:20 So it's a very good way of working, and it's very useful.
01:25 Especially because we are working with complex problems.
01:29 Loneliness and isolation is a very complex problem.
01:33 So you need to be more than one group working.
01:38 [Music]