Table 3.

Physiological and psychological health issues associated with loneliness. It is important to note that many of the issues mentioned are comorbid and associated with “secondary” conditions.

Physical Health Consequences/Risks	Mental Health Consequences/Risks
-Increased systolic blood pressure [46]	-Reduced time in bed spent asleep (7% less) (and overall sleep quality) [46,48,49]
-Increased risk of heart disease [46,47,50]	-Increased wake time after sleep onset [46,48]
-Increased risk of stroke [47,50]	-Increase in depressive symptomology [49,51]
-Vision deficits [51]	-Poor self-related health [51]
-Reduced quality of life (applies to both physical and mental aspects) [52]	-Impaired functional status/cognition [46,49,51]
-Disability (applies to both physical and mental aspects) [49,53,54]	-Perceived negative change in the quality of one’s life [49,51]
-Stress [49]	-Suicide attempts/completed suicides (among older adults) [55]
-Increased mortality [49,56,57]	-Anxiety [4,47,58,59]
-Increased use of healthcare services [49,60,61,62]
-Institutionalization [63]