In a nutshell, social wellness is the positive effect friends have on your mental and physical health. In quantitative terms it is a measure of your health based on the number of close, personal friends you have, how often you spend time with them in person and how often you make new, lasting friendships.
Recent scientific research has provided conclusive evidence that the need for friends in our lives is not optional as previously thought but is in fact as essential to our well being as are healthy sources of air, water, food and physical activity. Without these things we survive, but we do not live well and not as long as we might.
As a result of a study by Duke University in 2001 it was suggested that the magnitude of the health risk associated with social isolation, the opposite of social wellness, is comparable with that of cigarette smoking. Social isolation has been clinically linked to chronic illnesses such as heart disease and shown to have a significant impact on the likelihood of experiencing illness in general. It has also been shown to have a dramatic impact on the process of recovery from either illness or injury. The reason is simple, social isolation lowers the function of our immune system. It has also repeatedly been shown to be a major factor in a number mental health issues, including depression.
Social wellness means having a number of intimate friends and an active social life. By “active social life” I mean in this case that you see your friends on a regular, preferably weekly basis. It is entirely possible, and in fact quite common, for people to have an “active social life”, attending a whirl of parties and functions, and yet have no friends with whom they share a close connection.
Social wellness works a lot like physical fitness. It pays off immediately and in the long run. Similarly, also though generally enjoyable and rewarding, it does not come without discipline, effort and challenges. You get out what you put in. A lack of physical fitness can send you to the doctor. But you don’t go to the doctor to get fit, you go to the local gym or start a personal fitness program. Similarly, the local offices of the government social services agency may be where we end up due to a lack of social wellness but its not where we go to improve our lives in that dimension. Like physical fitness, improvements in the area of social wellness require changes to our lifestyle. To increase our social wellness we also need our own “personal fitness program”. On this site I explain how to create one.
While we are on the subject of definitions, social wellness is not the same as on-line “social networking” for one absolutely critical reason – personal contact is essential to social wellness, as I will explain later, while meeting in person generally plays no part in on-line social networks.
Another term commonly associated with social wellness is “social capital”. Social capital is a political science term and is concerned mainly with the health of society from a civic perspective. In contrast social wellness focuses primarily on the emotional and physical health of the individual.
Finally, to allay any fears as to where we might be going with this, social wellness is NOT the same as “networking”, an activity commonly associated with business mixers. Business networking among acquaintances and associates results in transaction based relationships whereas social wellness is the result of trust based relationships. Only trust based relationships, those you have with your close, personal friends, produce the positive effects on your health and happiness and result in an increased level of social wellness.
