A Vital Advocate

One of the experts to whom Someone To Tell It To turns, to help inform our values, understandings, and practices, is the United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD. His best-selling 2022 book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, his podcast, House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy, his public appearances, and his landmark advisory about the profound consequences of loneliness and isolation, all help us to do our listening and educational work with greater authority, knowledge, and compassion. Most recently, as well, Dr. Murthy has increasingly been warning parents and leaders how many social media platforms are threatening the well-being of children and teenagers.  Dr. Murthy believes that we are in a systematic public health crisis, and he is traveling the country to inspire and motivate leaders in healthcare, government, organizations, and communities to help rebuild social connection and healthier relationships with one another. 

He speaks and writes about his own struggles connecting intentionally with others. He knows that it takes continual effort to nurture close connections in a busy and complex world. As a husband and father of two young children, and with a highly public and demanding job, he is not immune to the pressures that keep us all from connecting with others as much as we’d like. Still he knows that meaningful human relationships are necessary for us to have healthy and fulfilling lives. It is why he is focusing on the increasing loneliness that is physically, mentally, emotionally, and relationally harming people’s health in epidemic proportions. 

Unfortunately, there is a stigma that surrounds loneliness. The Surgeon General is striving to alleviate that stigma. If we cannot easily talk about our loneliness and disconnection, we can never overcome it. Our culture and technology - for all their connective attributes - still don’t make it easy to connect in deeper, more meaningful ways with many people in our lives. But it is our relationships, Dr. Murthy asserts, that are the “most tangible and powerful way we can manifest generosity and love”.  

Loneliness, it is increasingly understood, contributes to many illnesses - cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, diabetes, and depression. Suicides increase because of it. Loneliness shortens lifespans. The financial costs due to the need for more intensive healthcare are massive, to individuals, families, businesses, and anywhere people are employed. It affects absenteeism rates, productivity, and whether people can even work at all. Relationships, of all kinds, suffer - often terribly -  too. 

Someone To Tell It To addresses these problems and helps to serve as a preventative force to keep people more healthy - physically, emotionally, mentally, and relationally. That is why we listen to people, enabling them to have burdens lifted from their hearts and minds. We train and educate individuals, groups, and organizations in how to listen better and how to respond in ways that help those being listened to heal more, rather than responding in hurtful and damaging ways. 

We admire and respect Dr. Murthy for his concentration on this pervasive and debilitating epidemic that is only growing worse across our country and around the world. We applaud his efforts to tell the story of how loneliness, disconnection, and isolation hurt us more than most of us know. He is sharing a message that all of us need to understand. He wants us to take it seriously so that all throughout our culture, professionally and personally, we may be healthier and better for embracing it and leaning in to alleviating the loneliness, disconnection, and isolation around - and even within us.

HIs advocacy about loneliness’s harms is an antidote that we are    dedicated to sharing to bring better health to us all.