The Most Wonderful Time Of Year?

It’s the SILLY SEASON, when parties, presents and prosecco abound. But what if you feel leftout of the festivities – or COMPLETELY ALONE?

- Laura Collins

The offer from a London pub was simple: if you’re going to be alone on Christmas Day, come here. There’ll be a hot meal and your choice of festive poison waiting for you. And company. On what can be the loneliest day of the year for many, it was a lifeline – something to cling to when everyone else had, quite literally, gone home. Christmas can be the most wonderful time of the year – but not for all of us. For many, it’s a season of extreme loneliness. If your family lives far away, if you’re grieving, if you’ve just been through a break-up, if you have nobody, then all those carols about being together and the magazine spreads featuring family feasts are completely at odds with how you’ll be spending December 25.

Beyond Blue lead clinical adviser Dr Grant Blashki says Christmas can be extremely lonely and isolating. “It can stir up memories and past conflicts, place significant financial pressure on families and be a stressful period for people who have existing mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression,” he says.

We don’t often talk about loneliness because there’s nothing fun or easy or comfortable about saying, “I feel alone.” For all the gains we’ve made in discussing mental health, loneliness — ironically — has been left behind. And that’s a problem because it’s emotionally and physically debilitating. Research shows loneliness can be as harmful to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and as big a mortality risk as having diabetes.

Millennials and post-millennials have been observed as the loneliest generations ever. If you’re marginalised that risk increases – for instance, in a survey conducted by the UK disability charity Scope, 85 per cent of disabled young people (those aged between 18 and 34) reported feeling lonely.