Could you talk to me a little bit about the connection between mental health and loneliness in your perception of course.

Well definitely loneliness really, really is not good for your mental health, that’s the obvious one. [58:40] It did terrible things to my mental health especially in my at the start of my time at university, that was probably the worse my mental health as ever been and that was almost solely due to loneliness. I think mental health issues can again worsen loneliness. Things like anxiety making it harder to interact with people and it falls into the same pattern of negative thoughts that I think mental illness can have, so there is a lot of overlap between the two.

So you’re talking about a directional relationship as well?

Yes, yes, I think it’s another vicious cycle basically. [59:31] I was going to say I think with depression especially there’s a tendency to feel like you’re the only person in the world who’s ever felt that bad and that’s something that

loneliness can really worsen because you already feel like you’re not like other people, you’re not relating to other people, maybe there’s something different about you and then depression says yes no one else suffers like you.

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so there are many lonely figures that we see in movies or we read about in books or we see on the telly, does anybody pop to mind that you can identify with?

I don’t think so right now. So I know the kind of archetypes you mean though. I tended to actively avoid a lot of depictions of loneliness in the media because they worsened my feeling of being defective or alienated and they worsened my feeling of hopelessness and again I think there was a lack of talking about loneliness as a thing that can happen to just normal people. It was always this person visibly has no social skills and you know is really

profoundly like struggling in society, not this is another well adjusted person who has got some confidence issues and is struggling to make friends in a new context.[46:41]

I see your point.

Yes, and so they make me feel worse because it would increase this feeling of “oh there’s something wrong with me” rather than I’m in a tight spot right now, I need to find my feet, so I tend to avoid that.

I: Did you ever go to the GP to ask for any advice on loneliness?

I’m not very trusting of GP’s on mental health things.

I: Why?

Of anything outside that’s strictly physical. Essentially because I’ve had bad experiences of them and almost everyone I know has had bad experiences with them and I’m looking to go into healthcare related things right now and health management, I do feel really frustrated with the lack of knowledge that a lot of GP’s have on mental health and quality of life and social life and that kind of thing.

I: And how they’re interconnected?

Yes and I think they can be quite dismissive and I think they can be very unhelpful. In general I mean I have just had bad experiences anytime I was going for a GP for anything more complicated than an antibiotic prescription to be honest but in particular when I did eventually for reasons not really related to loneliness but when I went to a GP in [city] to ask for antidepressants, I remember that her response is really sort of dismissive for example she said “Well you know they’re not really affective in your age group, talking therapies are much more effective” and I said “But as I’ve explained…” because we’d had a conversation before I’ve had talking therapies for two years and they didn’t help and my friend who was a medical student said that antidepressants can combination yes antidepressants can make talking therapies more effective and I’m really suffering right now and I want to try everything basically. Obviously, I’m not going to stop the talking therapies and then she said “Antidepressants are generally for people who are more severe than you”. I had to explain, I was like, I know I’m keeping my life together, I’ve always been very high functioning depressed but I was very miserable and so she gave them to me but it was so begrudging and well as soon as you’ve done your finals we’ll take you off them, so yeah that’s kind of indicative of my experiences talking to GP’s about more complex things and I don’t know how they train doctors 20 years ago but I’m not very impressed with the results.

I mean I have a little gripe with them. A lot of doctors kind of close ranks when you bring up the issue with mental health not being taken seriously I think because there’s this kind of like “Oh no you can’t criticise our profession we’re trying to help you” but I do think it is really a mixed bag with GP’s especially.

Okay, would you like to share any messages with other people that might be feeling lonely?

I think mostly that it isn’t a deficiency in them, it’s just a thing that happens to people. I think the flip side of humans being social creatures that really benefit from positive social experiences is that loneliness is sort of a constant hazard but it’s almost never a long term. Well I think it’s usually not a long term form of existence and it’s not your fault if you’re experiencing it.

Who do you think it is?

I’m not sure if there is anyone we can point the blame at but yes, if there was anyone it would be society. I think we all have a responsibility to try and stop other people from feeling lonely and that’s something that I really enjoyed when I was feeling better towards the end of my time at university and so I think there is a degree of shared responsibility of are you not looking out for other people and I think people in positions of power need to think about are they making whatever it is they have power over an environment that exacerbates loneliness or that helps it.

So individualistic culture that we have?

Yes, I think that’s something the worse is loneliness and if you run a space that’s a school or a café or what, you have some responsibility to make sure that’s a place people can feel comfortable and able to talk to other people and I think if you spend time in that space, you have some responsibility to look out for other people. I think it’s not my problem, attitude has a lot of responsibility for loneliness.

Yes, I wanted to ask you about social media and loneliness and what do you think the equation is there? Where does it fit in to loneliness in your experience, in your opinion?

So it definitely can exacerbate loneliness if you’re already kind of feeling that way, seeing the cliques form in real time, other people having friends and enjoyable social lives can make that worse. On the other hand I don’t think it creates at wholesale. Fundamentally the points where I was feeling

lonely, I was feeling lonely because I just had very few friends and very few good friends who I was close and intimate with. Seeing social media sort of present the picture of other people having a great time worsened that but if I had friends I wouldn’t look at other people’s lives and go “oh they’re doing better than me” of that makes sense. It just exacerbated that feeling of I’m different to everyone else, there must be something wrong with me because I can’t connect with people like this.

I see, I see what you’re saying.

Yes, so I think sometimes there’s a media narrative of “oh well we’re only dissatisfied with what we have” because social media presents an idealised picture to us and I don’t think that’s quite been my experience. I think it does present and idealised picture but it worsens an existing problem if you have a self-esteem problem basically but when I’m, when you’re out with your friends, when you do feel like you have an adequate friendship circle even if it not ideal even in the periods and the end of first year and the start of second year where I was annoyed with my friends or feeling like I lacked quality and depth of friendship, I wasn’t on social media sort of mad at other people or feeling like that made me worse.

I see, I see the connection there.

Yes, it was only when it was already a real problem basically that social media could have any influence on me.