Priority One Feeling socially connected can be a matter of life or death! Priority One Executive Manager, Psychological Education Nat Dunton.
What is social connectedness? The importance of social connectedness has never been more forefront in our minds and more sought after than this past year living with COVID-19 reports Priority One Executive Manager and Psychologist Nat Dunton. A year that has seen social isolation and loneliness peak with increases in poor mental health due to this forced disconnect.
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We are inherently social creatures. It’s evolutionary! Social engagement and connection occurs outside the realm of our own consciousness. In fact, it is a core psychological need for you to engage socially and maintain a variety of quality interpersonal relationships. Feeling part of a group engenders a sense of trust and support, a sense of self-esteem, control and a sense of purpose, direction and meaning and allows for the giving and receiving of care, support and protection.1, 2, 3 While this may conjure up thoughts that these connections need to be deep and meaningful, research has shown that it is also in our participation in everyday contacts (known as social integration) that our social brain is engaging and connecting with people. Simply making eye contact, shaking hands and giving a high five is enough to release oxytocin which increases your level of trust and lowers your cortisol levels, decreasing stress. How much in-person interaction are you having right now–whether it be in your current office or station or within your community?
What reduces your chances of survival the most? This was the key question asked by the researcher and psychologist Julianne HoltLunstad in a study spanning seven years exploring all aspects of lifestyle to look at the key factors that reduced the chances of mortality. The top two predictors of mortality were related to aspects of social relationships: (a) whether you had high or low levels of social support and (b) whether you had social integration. Social support refers to the psychological and practical or material resources provided by a social network to help individuals cope with stress. There is a strong link between
social relationships and many different aspects of health and wellness. These relationships play a critical role in how you function in your day-to-day life. Evidence from the Harvard Grant study (spanning 80 years) showed that the most important component of a long and happy life is having good positive relationships and that this also helped to delay both mental and physical decline for the men in the study. Working within ambulance, we know that it is social support that assists people in the first instance after a significant life event or critical incident. However, the types of reactions and/or responses that we may experience after such events can mean that we withdraw from social support. Action 1: Pay attention to each other to ensure that we remain connected in various ways and broaden your social networks both in and out of the workplace. It is also well evidenced that in your workplaces, if you experience emotional support from your team or colleagues, it creates a buffer effect from work-related stress and better job satisfaction compared to employees who have poor team cohesion or social support. Morale is also higher in cohesive teams because of increased team member communication, friendly team environment, loyalty and team member contribution in the decision-making process. Action 2: To enhance team cohesion in your current work group and create a greater sense of wellbeing and belonging at work, be proactive in creating positive workplace relationships. A very poignant issue relevant to both our clinical health professionals and Emergency Medical Dispatchers is when you have been involved in an adverse patient event, medical error and/or a patient related injury and experience trauma reactions as a result. There may be a feeling of being personally responsible for the patient outcome. You could feel that you have failed the patient or be second guessing your clinical skills or knowledge base. In these instances, ultimately, social support was the most important variable in determining whether a clinician would drop out, merely survive the experience, or experience post traumatic growth due to the struggle and thrive.4
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Social integration refers to how much you interact with people as you move through your day and it has a protective benefit. Building this interaction into our workplace bolsters the immune system, sends good hormones surging through the bloodstream and brain and helps you live longer. Greater social support has been linked to a lower risk for cancer recurrence, higher survival rates among heart attack survivors, lower blood pressure, better immune responses, and better psychological wellbeing. In contrast, poor social support has been linked to depression and loneliness and has been shown to alter brain function and increase the risk of alcohol use, cardiovascular disease, depression and suicide. Reflecting on this past year in 2020 with COVID-19, there may never have been another time in most of our lives where we have experienced the significant impacts of social isolation.
Did you know that you experience pain when you experience social rejection? We know that pain is a necessary function that warns the body of potential or actual injury. Historically, the denial of access to social groups was a powerful means of punishment as it often meant death. In a 2011 paper published in Molecular Psychiatry, a team of researchers showed that responses to social rejection and physical pain share similar neurochemical pathways. Consistent with this research, it was found that in conditions of social pain there is activation of an area within your brain that is traditionally associated with the sensory processing of physical pain. The amount of social support provided during a socially painful event reduces activity in these brain pain-related areas. It is thought that the body’s opioids are released to lessen the pain of social rejection, much as they do during physical injury. Social isolation can lead to feelings of fear of others, negative self-esteem or loneliness. This epidemic of loneliness has soared in recent times, which has resulted in the United Kingdom appointing a Minister for Loneliness. Evidence suggests that a significant number of individuals, at least in developed countries, are lonely.
