June 2025 Reading Club: Loneliness and Isolation

Posted by liaison on June 3rd, 2025 Posted in: Opportunity to Participate

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On behalf of the NNLM Reading Club team, we are pleased to announce the June 2025 theme, Loneliness and Isolation.

Anyone can experience loneliness and isolation. According to this article, Build Social Bonds to Protect Health from NIH News in Health, many factors can contribute to a person feeling lonely. These include the quality of your personal relationships, your community, and society in general. Your personal health, life stage, and personality can also have an impact.

“There’s a difference between social isolation and loneliness, but the two are related. Social isolation means you have few connections or contacts with others. Loneliness has to do with how you feel about being alone, or your perception.” Both loneliness and social isolation can be harmful to health. Even people who feel okay about being socially isolated are at increased risk for poorer health.

Despite the links between our social ties and health, there’s been a troubling increase in social disconnection around the world. About 1 in 3 adults nationwide report feeling lonely. About 1 in 4 say they lack social and emotional support.

This resource from the CDC called How Right Now provides specific ideas to support social connection as well as resources to get help including links to 24/7 support.

We are featuring three new books related to Loneliness and Isolation:

• Loneliness and Company by Charlee Dyroff
• Seek You by Kristen Radtke
• Together by Vivek Murthy

We would like to thank our NNLM Reading Club Advisory Group which is made up of NNLM Members who worked together to choose this topic, select the three books we are featuring this month, and to develop book discussion guides.

Books and health information resources are available on our Reading Club site.