Psychoneuroimmunology of the Perceived Social Isolation/Loneliness

Perceived Social IsolationSocial isolation or lonelinessLoneliness has come to the foreground of global discussion and research in the times of the COVID-19COVID-19 pandemicPandemic and the preventive social distancing measures. In this chapter, we will try to illuminate the pathophysiologic interactions between lonelinessLoneliness and physical and mental illness: from Selye’s model of general adaptation to stress and Engel’s biopsychosocial model, we will approach the psychoneuroimmunological aspects of loneliness as a “silent” social stressor inducing deleterious effects on organisms in the absence of social contact and external stimuli. We will present (a) the major stress response systems that become activated in conditions of perceived social isolationSocial isolation, (b) the chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, inflammation, and metastatic cancerCancer that lonelinessLoneliness has been statistically associated with, and (c) certain sociodemographic groups that are more vulnerable to its effects like the LGBTQ + , the elderlyElderly, and the bereaved people. In this quest we will have the work of JT Cacioppo, father of Social Neuroscience as our guide, relating loneliness to the motivation for bonding and connectedness and the desperate wish to be part of humanity.