Love-Shyness Costs Society Money
One of the key reasons why the public needs to become concerned
about love-shyness is that the problem does cost state and federal gov-
ernrnents a great deal of money. During the past twenty years a great
deal of research has been conducted on the relationship between social
support systems and medical well-being. In general, social support has to
do with the extent to which a person is integrated into family and friend-
ship networks. The results of this research have been quite consistent
and remarkable. A list of some of the most representative findings follows:
1. Hospital patients who are married and who have friends who
sincerely care about them recuperate from their diseases, sur-
gical procedures, etc., significantly faster, and with fewer conq-
plications, than do those who are not married and/or do not
have meaningful friendships.
2. People who have many disruptive changes happening in their
lives tend to be far more vulnerable to all manner of medical
and psychiatric disorders than those whose lives are not afflicted
by disruptive changes. However, even among people with an
enormous amount of disruptive change in their lives, medical
and psychiatric symptoms are exceedingly rare among those
who are well integrated into loving family and friendship net-
works which deeply and sincerely care about them. In other
words, deficits in social and emotional support wield effects
upon a person's health that are much more dangerous and
damaging even than severe life stress and change.
3. Elderly people whose rate of social interaction with friends is
high, tend to (1) live significantly longer, and (2) enjoy signif-
icantly better health, than do those elderly who do not enjoy
meaningful friendships.
4. Pregnant women are far more likely to suffer birth complica-
tions if they are not well integrated into a caring family and
friendship support system. In one study of women with many
significant life changes occurring over a short period of time,
91 percent of those whose family and friendship support was
inadequate suffered birth complications, compared to only 33
percent of women (with similar high life change scores) who
had the friendly support of family and friends.
5. Alcoholics who try to stop drinking on their own are less than
one-twentieth as likely to succeed as are those alcoholics who
are well integrated into supportive family and friendship net-
works, such as Alcoholics Anonymous groups.
6. Asthmatics who are poorly integrated into family and friend-
ship support systems typically have to take as much as four
times as much medication as those who enjoy the benefit of inte-
gration into such systems.
7. In a random sample of women who had suffered a severe event
or major difficulty in their lives, only 4 percent of those with a
close confidante came down with a depressive psychiatric dis-
order, compared to 38 percent of those who did not have a
confidante. In effect, those without a meaningful friendship
were almost ten times more vulnerable to serious psychiatric
problems as were those with a close friendship.
8. In a large sample of blue-collar men who had lost their jobs,
extent of social support was found to be very strongly asso-
ciated with high blood pressure, heart disease, and arthritis
symptoms. For example, only 4 percent of the men who were
well integrated into kinship and friendship support systems
had two or more swollen joints. In contrast, 41 percent of the
men classified as "low" in social/emotional support had two
more more swollen joints.
9. Unemployed people without a supportive friendship network
evidence significantly higher elevations and greater changes in
measures of serum cholesterol, illness symptoms and depressed
behavior, than do unemployed people with a supportive family
and friendship network.
10. Low social/emotional support is strongly associated with all
manner of serious crime and psychopathology. In fact, the
more serious and violent a person's crime is, the more tho-
roughgoing the extent of alienation from supportive friendship
and family networks that one can expect to find in the life of
the perpetrator.
11. Social support increases coping ability, which is the etiological
gateway to health and well-being. Social-emotional support
short-circuits the illness responses to stress.
12. A low sense of social-emotional support exacerbates life stress.
And for most people it is a major stressor in and of itself.
Fifteen years ago sociologist Derek Phillips found that social par-
ticipation was the single, most important correlate of human happiness.
Working with a much larger, nationwide sample, psychologist Jonathan
Freedman published essentially the same finding in 1978. During the
1970s decade many different sociologists and psychologists explored the
causes of human happiness. And virtually all of these researchers con-
cured with the conclusion of Phillips and Freedman that frequent social
involvement with other people is the most important of all factors giving
rise to feelings of happiness and well-being. The second most important
factor, by the way, is the feeling that one is in charge--in the "driver's
seat"---of one's own life. And this too is a feeling which tends to be
virtually nonexistent among the ranks of the severely love-shy.
Scores of additional research findings similar to the foregoing could
be cited. The message of all of this work is clear: love relationships and
friendship support systems help people to cope better with the stresses
and strains of everyday living. The very fact of having an intimate con-
ridante mollifies and greatly reduces the effects of stress upon both the
mind and the body. Hence, medical and psychiatric symptomology tends
to be significantly less for people who are well integrated into family
and peer group support systems. Further, when illness does strike, those
with love relationships and friends manage to recuperate significantly
faster than those lacking in such social-emotional support systems.
In essence, people with families and close friends make signifi-
cantly fewer demands upon medical care delivery systems than do those
without close ties to family or to friends. The same can be said in regard
to psychiatric services. The lonely and the isolated constitute the major
consumers of psychiatric services; and this includes services which are
geared towards the remediation of alcohol and drug addiction. Indeed,
this fact is well symbolized in the title of a psychiatric book that was
popular approximately ten years ago. Its title was PSYCHOTHERAPY:
THE PURCHASE OF FRIENDSHIP.
Fortunately, most people know how to make friends and to give
each other the needed social and emotional support. Similarly, most
people are able to marry and to partake in the full range of normal social
activities pertinent to family formation. People such as the love-shy who
lack these abilities need to be systematically educated and trained so
that they too can be effectively shielded against many of the stresses
and strains of everyday living. It is obviously in society's best interest to
provide such education and training. Any expenditures that are made
in the interests of such training will eventually be repaid to society more
than one-hundredfold in the form of healthier, better adjusted citizens.
In short, if every person has both a lover and a confidante, the incidence
of medical and psychiatric pathologies will be far less than what prevails
today. The savings in both money and in human suffering will be
extremely formidable.
