{"id":13352,"date":"2019-03-01T13:55:36","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T03:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neighbourday.org\/?p=13352"},"modified":"2022-03-01T11:33:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T01:33:22","slug":"challenging-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.relationships.org.au\/challenging-loneliness\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenging Loneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Nick Tebbey, National Executive Officer Relationships Australia<\/p>\n
Today Neighbour Day is issuing a Loneliness Challenge to all Australians.\u00a0 We are asking everyone to help end loneliness in their neighbourhood by committing to create a connection with someone in their local community each week this March.<\/p>\n
It could be a small action \u2013 a few friendly words across the back fence, inviting an elderly neighbour in for a cuppa, organising a community get-together, or stopping for a chat when walking the dog.<\/p>\n
It could be a grand gesture \u2013 organising a big neighbourhood BBQ, engaging the neighbours in a street fair, putting on a community concert.<\/p>\n
This year, our theme for Neighbour Day is \u2018loneliness \u2013 what neighbours can do to create connections\u2019. The theme builds on the work done by Relationships Australia in 2018 to raise awareness of the loneliness crisis facing Australia.<\/p>\n
Relationships Australia\u2019s\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0found that one in ten people lack social support or connection and one in six are experiencing emotional loneliness. Alarmingly, just under 1.5 million Australians are reporting that they\u2019ve experienced loneliness for a decade or more.<\/p>\n Single parents, particularly single fathers, are most likely to experience the key indicators of loneliness with almost 40% of younger fathers reporting a lack of social support and more than 40% reporting emotional loneliness.<\/p>\n Other key findings of the research were that widowed men and women under 65 years of age also report high rates of loneliness, while people in de facto relationships reported they were lonelier than people in other relationship types.<\/p>\n People with poorer health were also more likely to report higher rates of emotional loneliness and a lack of social support.<\/p>\n