Bioethics and the Culture of Loneliness

The connection between loneliness and health has been researched within the bioethical field of health care.The results aim to describe the impact of loneliness on health and to indicate both scientific and extrascientific perspectives that can help bioethics shape opinions, attitudes, and behaviors acceptable for alleviating or addressing the problem of loneliness in the emerging culture of loneliness.For this purpose, the results of research published in the medical database PubMed that has linked the words loneliness and health in their titles over the last 5 years are presented and analyzed.The research was limited to the selection and analysis of articles with free access to the full texts.The interdisciplinarity of bioethics required an examination of whether, and which, social sciences and humanities address the issue of loneliness, as well as the methodologies through which they contribute to finding ways of fostering higher-quality human connectedness and reducing human alienation.The multiperspective character of bioethics has indicated that social sciences and humanities, social institutions, worldviews, and values play a key role in creating an environment in which various forms of social integration and interpersonal connection can be created, care for others can be expressed, and thus the impact of loneliness on health can be decreased.