You probably have not heard about the importance of social wellness before because it is a new idea and an emerging science.
Once upon a time the following were new ideas too:
- Germs
- Smoking causes cancer
- Physical fitness
- Global warming
There was a time when each of these ideas, which we now accept as self evident, were unknown. Each was challenged when proposed as far fetched, if not in some way dangerous, by one group or another. Like these in their own time, social wellness is a new idea.
News articles about global warming only began appearing in any number in the late 1990’s and the idea did not really become considered a self evident belief until after Al Gore’s ground breaking movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in August of 2006. The majority of people had not heard of the issue before that, yet as soon as late 2007 the majority of countries in the world were passing laws, not just signing agreements, with regard to global warming. It took only ten years to go from being a fringe idea known to a few scientists, to being at the top of the public and political agenda.
Articles to do with social wellness are only now, at the turn of this century, beginning to be published in scientific, medical and other journals. The volume of research and findings is building but it is not yet an idea that is widely known. Public awareness with regard to social wellness today is where global warming’s was in the early 1990’s.
Only the development of our new computer systems, with their ability to find patterns in vast amounts of data, has enabled us to see conclusively that social isolation has a significant health impact. That is why it is now a new idea and an emerging science you have not heard of before. We needed modern computers to enable us to become aware of the connection. Let me give you an couple of examples.
In modern hospitals, where everything is scrupulously tracked and recorded, we can now see the relation ship between identical procedures, recovery times and the number of visitors each patient has. The more visitors a patient has, the faster their wounds heal and the sooner they can be sent home.
With heart attack patients, the more social support they have in place when they go home, the more likely they will survive. They will recover faster and are less likely to have a recurrence.
Its not the chicken soup that makes you better, it’s the person who brings you the chicken soup.
