Loneliness Peaks at Three Key Ages, Study Finds — but Wisdom May Help

A study published in International Psychogeriatrics found more people reported feeling moderate to severe loneliness during their late 20s, mid-50s, and late 80s than in other life periods, reports CNN . "Loneliness is defined as 'subjective distress,'" says University of California, San Diego Professor Dilip Jeste. "It is the discrepancy between the social relationships you want and the social relationships you have." According to Jeste, an inverse relationship exists between loneliness and wisdom. "In other words, people who have high levels of wisdom didn't feel lonely, and vice versa," he notes. Cornell University Professor Anthony Ong says this inverse association is "suggestive of the role of personality in the development and persistence of loneliness over time." Jeste says his team theorized that people would report more loneliness in old age, based on the "usual assumption that as people get older, they become more alone," but were surprised when they discovered a mid-50 peak in addition to the one in the late 80s. "The mid-50s is the midlife crisis period," Jeste notes. Usually, this is when health starts declining and many people learn that they have pre-diabetes or heart disease. "And the late 80s is, of course, a period when, if you're lucky to have survived to that age, then things start getting worse," Jeste says. Most surprising was a 76 percent prevalence of moderate to severe loneliness, up from an expected prevalence of about 33 percent.