"I Feel Lonely, and That is Okay": A Conversation with Professor Pamela Qualter

Pamela Qualter is a Professor of Psychology for Education at the University of Manchester and one of the UK's leading scientific experts on child and adolescent loneliness. She led the BBC Loneliness Experiment, at the time the world's largest study of loneliness, and her work spans two connected strands: the causes and consequences of loneliness across the life course, and the social and emotional skills that shape how we relate to one another. She has advised the UK Government's Tackling Loneliness Team and a World Health Organization scientific group on interventions for social isolation and loneliness.

What follows is a conversation between two loneliness researchers who openly exchange not only theories but their own experiences of loneliness. We both say, plainly, "Yes, I have felt loneliness too" is part of the point, a small enactment of the destigmatising work we both argue for.

Ceyda: Pam, you've already told me a little about your childhood, how you moved around a lot and had to build social connections again and again from scratch. Could you elaborate on that?

Pamela: As a child I moved an awful lot, every twelve months or so, a new home. What was hard for me was the need to develop new relationships, new friendships, over and over. I got to a point where I thought there was no point anymore: I'm not going to have these people in another twelve months.

But I came away from that, and during college and university I started forming relationships again, and I became okay with the fact that relationships don't have to last a whole lifetime. It's fine that some relationships serve a purpose and only exist for twelve months. Having had the experience and then being able to reflect on it, I thought: I'm not a worse person because my experiences are different.

The most important moment for me, though, the thing that pushed me toward studying loneliness, was a second-year psychology lecture. The tutor said loneliness was something only adults experienced, because children didn't have the brain power or the intellectual capability to feel it. That really drove me. At the time nobody was looking at loneliness in youth, there were no papers, no literature. So even as a nineteen-year-old undergraduate I thought, I want to explore this. I don't think there's anything strange or odd about me; I think this happens for lots of people. And it does. Ever since, I've felt a need to be an advocate, to make sure we talk about it, that we don't stigmatise it, and that we recognise it's part of being human. And that's okay.

Ceyda: What made you think you weren't strange, that you weren't the only one? That's quite a strong realisation.

Pamela: That came later, as a young adult, after that lecture, reflecting on my experience. As a child and an early adolescent, I think I did believe there was something strange about me. I saw my peers able to engage, to keep developing relationships, to look happy, and I internalised that and thought it was about me. It was only as a young adult that I could think about it differently.

Ceyda: So you made sense of your childhood experience once you were older. That actually resonates with me. I was quite a shy child, I read encyclopaedias, I'm old enough to know what an encyclopaedia is :), and I read constantly, but I didn't know how to make friends. I didn't have that social skill yet. My parents are very outgoing, talkative with strong personalities, and I was just a very shy girl. So, when you say "it wasn't about me, it's a normal experience", so it really resonates.

I'm also interested in the relocation, because we don’t talk about that in loneliness research. What do you think made it difficult to invest in new relationships after repeated moves?

Pamela: Yes, that's exactly what happened. I remember during high school, that last move, thinking: I don't want to develop these relationships anymore. I don't want to invest the time, and I don't want to feel that negativity, the sadness, the anger, when it all breaks down again.

That's what I mean about reflecting later: those were all natural responses to the situation, but at the time I thought there was something quite odd about me. That's a real driver for me now. I want people to realise that the negativity, even that feeling of hopelessness, is still natural and normal. I want to empower them. Even though it feels awful and you want to give up, what you actually need to do is get out and experience relationships. Some of them won't last, and that's okay. Relationships look different for different people. Not all of us will have a best friend forever. Some will, and that's great; others won't, and that's all right too.

Ceyda: One of the things I often say to my friends and clients is that many relationships have a season. I like to use the metaphor of a train journey: we all board at different stations, travel together for a while, and eventually some people get off while others get on.

I didn't move cities as a child, but as an adult, I've lived in eleven cities across six countries. That experience has taught me that people naturally come and go. Some stay in our lives for many years, but not every meaningful relationship is meant to last forever. I keep some relationships alive online and over the phone, and with every move I build a new social circle. Some friends follow me into the next chapter of my life; others do not.

I think many expats and immigrants struggle with this. They may grieve the relationships they left behind and find it difficult to leave room for new ones to grow. Given how intercultural, mobile, and digitalised the world has become, if you had been a child growing up in 2026, how do you think that would have shaped your childhood and your understanding of friendship and belonging?

Pamela: That's a really interesting question. There's so much discussion about social media and internet use. I've always argued that online communities can be really good for people, and I can see myself having benefited from that as a child, keeping some of those relationships alive. But I also think losing some of those relationships was a positive for me.

As an adult I definitely benefit from it. I have friends across the world I keep in touch with, colleagues who became friends, friends who've retired, and we've stayed connected because we can still communicate. If all we'd had was the telephone, I don't think some of those relationships would have lasted. Those quick interactions, a text, a quick check-in, keep them going. I have friends I see maybe once a year, but the moment we meet it feels like no time has passed, because we've been texting in between.

So I like that technology enables that. As a child, would I have used it the same way? I'd like to think so, but I don't know. What I do know is that all the hype about taking social media away from young people worries me. I think some of them would really benefit from being able to keep those relationships alive.

Ceyda: I agree, it's double-edged. On one hand it connects you to your people when you're away from home; on the other there's social comparison. But something you said interested me: that it felt beneficial to leave some friendships behind. What do you mean by that?

Pamela: I'm okay to admit that some relationships felt good for me at the time but, on reflection, maybe weren't, maybe there was a lot of social comparison going on. It's good that those relationships ended and I could move on and make new ones. I think it's important to say that relationships aren't always good for us. A lot of us end up in friendships, not just romantic relationships, that really aren't nice for us, where there's a power imbalance or something similar. Sometimes it's good to leave them behind.

Ceyda: Did you come to that conclusion after working on loneliness? Does studying loneliness make you pickier, or more reflective, about forming relationships?

Pamela: More reflective, not pickier. If anything, the opposite. I'm very open to interacting with anybody; I'm quite happy to sit on a train and chat to someone, and I'm happy for any relationship to grow into a friendship.

But I don't only study loneliness, I also work on social-emotional learning and emotional intelligence. That work has made me appreciate that friendships can look different, and that I have different needs that different people can meet. I don't need one person to do everything. I have a dog-walking group I see most days; it's quite superficial, but I love being part of it. And I have best friendships where I can go to the other person and tell them what's really worrying me. I'm okay with some relationships being just a simple hello.

And as well as that being what I need, I'm appreciative that it's probably what other people need too. In that dog-walking group, other people want superficial conversation as well, they want to see their dogs play, have a giggle, natter about silly things for an hour, and everyone benefits. But I wouldn't go to that group when I was having trouble at work or feeling down.

Ceyda: That makes a lot of sense. I often use an analogy with my clients that I call the "Relationship Onion", something I just hypothesised. At the core are my closest friends and family, the people I rely on most and with whom I have the deepest, most meaningful relationships. The next layer consists of friends I can be vulnerable with and talk to about my personal life, but where I also know the limits of the relationship. I care about them, but in a major crisis I would turn to my core circle. Beyond that are what I call my "event friends." We might be part of the same feminist reading group, go to concerts, festivals, or comedy shows together. I genuinely enjoy their company, but the connection is tied more to shared activities than deep personal intimacy. They're important relationships, but I wouldn't necessarily move them into my core. Then there are acquaintances and colleagues, the kind of people you described from your dog group. I like them, and they add value to my life, but the relationship isn't meaningful enough to carry across countries every time I move.

So between your train journey metaphor and my onion model, I think of many immigrants and expats, me included, who mourn the relationships they left behind, whether friendships or romantic relationships. When you first said that you'd developed a different perspective on friendship, I wasn't entirely sure what you meant. Now I think I understand. It's a bit like the onion: different relationships serve different purposes, and not all of them are meant to last forever.

Thinking about that onion, do you think loneliness comes primarily from not having those core relationships, or can it also arise from missing one of the outer layers?

Pamela: Loneliness can come from any of those layers when your relationship needs aren't met. If I didn't have those simple, everyday hellos, I'd feel something was missing, it's part of my routine, part of where I get my energy. If certain people aren't on my regular train journey, I feel a sense of emptiness, simply because I've lost that connection to the bigger, wider world.

In the loneliness research field, I feel so many researchers focus only on the core of the onion. A lot of our measures just capture that core. But it's so much bigger than that, which means we need interventions at different levels. If I don't see people on the outer layer, I know that going for a walk with my dogs will let me see enough people to fill that need. I could even go to a supermarket, they're strangers, but they still give me some sense of connection to the wider world.

Ceyda: That's interesting. As a therapist, my instinct is often to focus on the individual level. When we first started talking about community-based approaches, I wasn't entirely convinced. They may increase social contact, but what about the cognitive distortions that often accompany loneliness? My initial reaction is that if I have my core relationships, the people I can truly rely on, then I have meaning, connection, and support in my life. In that case, does it matter so much if I'm missing some of the outer layers?

What you're saying is making me reconsider that assumption. Perhaps community interventions aren't primarily about creating deep, core relationships. Instead, they help people build those outer layers of the onion: the event friends, the familiar faces, the acquaintances, the regulars. The people who provide a sense of belonging, routine, and connection to a wider community.

Maybe the implication is that we need interventions targeted at different layers of the onion. Therapy can help people strengthen their relationship with themselves, challenge unhelpful beliefs, and nurture their closest relationships. But who is responsible for creating the opportunities that allow the outer layers to develop? How do we create the spaces, routines, and communities that turn strangers into familiar faces, and familiar faces into meaningful social connections?

Pamela: Exactly. With intervention we have to think about each of those layers. At the outer layer it's about creating environments where we get those "bump-ins", simple opportunities to come together. That means walkable spaces, so not everyone's moving around in their cars. And I'm not just thinking about adults, it's intergenerational too, those opportunistic meetings.

Ceyda: I would like to ask you something. You used the word "constant". As someone who had to move a lot, do you think your childhood experiences shaped how you relate to stability and routine now? You've lived in Lincolnshire for twenty-six years now; you like your stable life, your constants, even on the train. So I wonder whether needing the third or fourth layer depends on the individual's experiences.

Pamela: I haven't thought about that, and I'm really open to it. It's quite possible that someone like me, who travelled all through childhood and adolescence, needs a level of stability and routine. And I think what that means for intervention work is that context matters, not just physical places, but what other experiences the individual brings to the situation. Yes, I'm open to that. It makes sense theoretically.

In fact, it connects to something I think about a lot as a researcher. I don't mind sharing personal things. I know lots of scientists won't, but I think it's important for people who aren't scientists to realise that the scientists who do this work are also people who have had these experiences. We can't somehow detach ourselves from that. Even when I'm trying to understand the experiences of young people, I can't hold back who I am and what I've experienced, to some extent I'll see their experiences through my own. I'm okay with that, and I'm very honest about it in my writing.

Ceyda: Thank you for your openness, and I agree with you. When I tell people I'm a loneliness researcher, they often ask, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, whether I've experienced loneliness myself. And yes, of course I have. I think we all have at some point. Part of what I'm trying to do is normalise those experiences, so people feel more comfortable talking about loneliness and seeking support and connection when they need it.

And I think that openness also explains why people become curious about the people behind the research. You've spent many years working on loneliness, often from a distance, and you've become one of the most recognisable voices in the field. Naturally, people are interested not only in your findings but also in your story. Until today, I'd never met you in person, but I was interested in you both professionally and personally. I've often wondered what your life has been like and what led you to dedicate your career to this work.

Academia is a strange place in that respect. It has its own version of rock stars. You read someone's papers for years without ever meeting them, and when a new paper comes out, it's a bit like hearing that your favourite musician has released a new album: "Oh, they've published something new, I need to read it".

So let me ask a very broad question: what is it actually like to be a loneliness researcher?

Pamela: It makes me laugh when you talk about rock-star status, it's just me, with all my faults. What I really like is how much the field has grown. When I started, there were just two of us in the whole of the UK studying loneliness, it was a lonely place, if you like.

Over time, the field of mental health has grown enormously. In the UK, the public talks very openly about mental health and wellbeing now. With loneliness we've seen peaks and troughs. When we ran the BBC Loneliness Experiment, we saw a real change in how the public talked about it, pre-COVID, it was being discussed at a country level. We got so many emails from people. We were trying to destigmatise loneliness and empower people to make changes in their own lives to reduce it, whether through therapy or by engaging with the opportunities open to them, and to realise it was in their power to do so. That increased again during COVID, and since then there's been a dip. The World Health Organization has shifted the narrative more recently in other countries, though not so much in the UK.

So as a researcher, what it's meant is waves, excitement, then drops, then excitement in other parts of the world. It's been good to see that change, and especially to see more young people coming into the field. I really like having people in that space who challenge the key ideas. New ideas come in, people challenge the old ones, it's exciting, because you can see the field moving. What I sometimes fear, when we hit those peaks, is people jumping on the bandwagon and publishing work that isn't really about loneliness, it's about social isolation, which confuses the public again. We saw that in the UK: a dip, then an increase, then people beginning to understand loneliness better again.

For me, the next big step is for the public to feel that loneliness has been destigmatised in the same way depression and anxiety have, so people can talk about it openly. Because they don't, even researchers find it very difficult to say, "Yes, I do experience this".

Ceyda: Why do you think people are so hesitant to share that experience, even researchers, who often give generic comments or dance around the core topic?

Pamela: I think it demonstrates how fundamental the human need for social interaction and belonging is. It's so fundamental that we don't want to admit we've ever been on the periphery of a social group, because historically that's such a dangerous place to be. So yes, there's a societal stigma, but I also think there's something biological, something evolutionary, driving the fact that so few people want to admit it.

Ceyda: What happens if someone says, "I'm lonely"?

Pamela: If they said it to me, I'd simply say, "Yeah, me too." But I don't think that would be everyone's response.

We did some research a while ago, as part of the BBC Loneliness Experiment, looking at stigma out in the world and also self-stigma, how you feel about yourself. The results suggested that if you approached someone and said you were feeling lonely, most people would try to help and support you, they'd listen and do their best. But the same individuals said that they themselves would feel complete embarrassment about admitting it.

So I wonder whether that embarrassment is being triggered by something biological, while in society we're actually adapting, beginning to respect people who talk about it openly. We might catch up eventually, so that the internal dialogue of embarrassment disappears and we can speak openly and get support if we need it. Because often, when we say "I'm feeling lonely," we're not necessarily asking someone to solve it. There's something about making it real when you say it out loud, as you'll know from being a therapist. Just saying "I'm depressed" suddenly makes it something real to work with.

Ceyda: So why do you think they feel embarrassed?

Pamela: I think it's that biological thing, it shows that at some point I was disliked, that I found myself on the periphery, on the outside of the group. There's something awful about that, and that's where the embarrassment comes from. And yet, maybe admitting it, saying "I'm lonely" to the people you feel excluded from, is actually offering an olive branch: "I feel on the periphery. Please let me have a way back in." Maybe it's as simple as that, and we need to encourage people to be far more open.

Ceyda:  I feel like people see loneliness as a personal failure, "If I'm lonely, it means I don't have the social skills to make friends or meaningful connections."

Pamela: I think it's even worse than that. I think it's "I'm not worthy of this group." That's potentially one step more potent. Think about what happens to an outsider.

Ceyda: From an evolutionary perspective, social exclusion may once have carried serious risks, because belonging to a group could be vital for safety and survival. Perhaps that helps explain why feeling on the outside can still feel so painful. In modern life, staying lonely is still part of social surviving. It's good that we feel it, because it can motivate us to reconnect, but finding meaning, in life and in relationships, isn't easy.

It's such a shame that when people experience loneliness they aren't open about it, because they close off the room for help. As you said, if someone tells me they're lonely, I'd say "me too," and I'd support them, most people would. But there's research on things like self-disgust and loneliness, self-esteem, attachment, and I think those things stop people saying it out loud, and make them see it as a personal failure. Does that make sense?

Pamela: It does, that feeling of being an outsider. Do you think that's because of the narrative that's out there? We know from the scientific literature about different temperament traits and the way we engage with the world, it's just part of how we're built. But we don't have those conversations at a public level about what loneliness is, and about the fact that it's biologically built into us to feel this way when things aren't going the way we need them to.

When we framed it that way in the BBC Loneliness Experiment, we did see people change. They said it empowered them to understand themselves better, to forgive themselves. So many of them said, "I felt dreadful about feeling this way. Now I know my body is just doing what it should. Now I know I can change it, so I'm going to try the different things you've suggested and see what works." For me, that's what it's about: empowering people through a public discussion of what loneliness is, so they understand the science. We just haven't got there yet with loneliness. I think we were there in the UK, and then for some reason it disappeared, maybe we didn't keep the conversation going long enough.

Ceyda: That loneliness is biological is such an important point. I once ran an online workshop for Turkish immigrants around the world, and on my first slide I used Cacioppo’s comparison between loneliness, hunger, and pain. We do not feel ashamed of being hungry or in pain; we recognise them as signals that something needs attention.

Loneliness can be understood in a similar way: as a signal that our need for connection may not be adequately met. That does not mean that every moment of solitude is a problem, or that there is one solution for everyone. But it may encourage us to notice what we need, perhaps a conversation, a familiar face, a deeper relationship, or support in taking the next step.

When loneliness is seen as a personal failure, it can perpetuate itself by making people withdraw. If I do not say, “I’m lonely,” I may miss the possibility that a friend or colleague could respond with kindness or invite me for a drink after work.

Pamela: I think linking it to hunger or thirst is a really good metaphor, because everyone understands it. You reach for a drink if you're thirsty; you eat if you're hungry; you should engage socially if you're lonely. That's a way to overcome it, and it's exactly what we did with the BBC. We hung it off that model, and it resonates with people.

Ceyda: How do you think the general population sees loneliness? Do you have a sense of their perceptions?

Pamela: We did some work, published a year or two ago though it was done earlier, where we wanted to see whether our measures of loneliness matched what young people actually said about the experience. We looked at the qualitative work,  interviews and focus groups with young people.

What we found is that they talk about loneliness as cognitive, certain thought processes, like thinking you don't fit in with a group, or that you need something more than your friend is providing, and as emotional, feeling sad or sometimes angry. And they talk about it in relation to the wider social group as well: friendships, but also that bigger onion layer, and even politically.

The public is a lot more astute than many academics have been in designing their measures. People understand that onion metaphor, they get that they need to belong on different levels. They need to feel the political climate is one in which their voice is heard; they need to belong to communities, whether a school or a workplace; they want people just to spend time with; and they want that core, the people they can tell their secrets to. They understand all of it. But it's not what we pick up in our measurements, and it's sad that we haven't designed our measures around what people tell us loneliness is. That's changing, we're getting better at listening, so our measures are improving.

People also talk about how they overcome loneliness themselves. There's a lot of discussion about getting "stuck" in loneliness, but actually not that many people do get stuck. Most are able to come out of it themselves, to reconnect, join social groups, or change their relationships so they get what they need. And that's the question we don't ask much as scientists: how do people get out of loneliness?

Ceyda: That's one of my theories. We all experience loneliness at some point, it's expected. You change a city, a partner, a job, and it happens. The loneliness you've described is situational and transient. But if you have trust in other people, and coping mechanisms, or if you work on your cognitive distortions, that's what stops it becoming chronic. I'm very interested in the buffers and the challenges: how some people overcome it and find the meaning they were missing. Do they socialise more? Join more events? Go to therapy? We always work with people who are currently experiencing loneliness, but what about those who experienced it in the past and came through?

Pamela: I agree.

Ceyda: Can I ask you something? You've said you experienced loneliness too. What was your solution?

Pamela: What was my solution? As a child, I was very good at distracting myself when I felt lonely. I spent most of my youth in libraries, I love reading, and I'm also very shy, and reading and shyness go quite well together. When I reached the point where I didn't want to make relationships anymore, distracting myself through books worked really well. I'm not saying it's a long-term strategy, but in the short term, for that last year before I moved again, it worked. I was living different lives through books, and I was okay with that. I'd have scored incredibly high on our loneliness measures, but I was managing.

I don't use distraction as much now, though I still do sometimes. With time, because as you get older you experience loneliness many more times, you build up a toolkit of ways to manage it. You have new ideas, but you also know what's worked before, so you can try that first. Escaping into a book, or going for a walk, that's worked before, so it might work again. If it doesn't, what else is in the toolkit? And I'm open to the possibility that none of it will work next time and I'll have to come up with something new. I'm not worried about that.

I think that's age rather than the research field, though it could be that I've read about lots of strategies. But I think I'd have learned them anyway. Which makes me want to go and find out what all those people who didn't get stuck actually did, let's compile a national toolbox of strategies.

Ceyda: I love that! Because I use the toolbox metaphor a lot in sessions. Over time, people can build a repertoire of ways to respond to difficult experiences. Some strategies will work in one moment but not another, and having several options can make it easier to adapt. Of course, adversity does not automatically make someone more resilient; it matters whether people have support, opportunities to reflect, and space to learn from what they have been through.

In one of my PhD studies, we found significant differences between older people and adolescents. Adolescence is a period of major social, emotional, and identity development, and young people may have had fewer opportunities to build and test their own coping strategies. Older adults, by contrast, may be able to draw on prior experiences of rejection, change, or loss. That does not make those experiences easy, but it can sometimes provide a sense of, “I have been through something difficult before, and I found a way through it.”

Your experience is valuable because, rather than immediately reconnecting with other people, you found some short-term comfort in books and fictional characters. That resonates with something I have heard from people in many different contexts: connection and comfort can sometimes come through quiet companionship too, including through animals.

Pamela: As a pet owner, I can definitely relate to that. The literature on pet ownership is really interesting, because you very rarely get significant correlations, and yet everyone you talk to, whether they have a dog, a cat, or a guinea pig, says how much that other creature helps. I never understand why we don't see it in the data; we're clearly not measuring something, because the qualitative work tells a quite different story.

I wonder whether it's because you don't have to use speech, human speech. There's something about just being together without having to explain anything. As humans, we often feel we have to explain ourselves, or fit in, or that we're not accepted for who we really are. Dogs give you unconditional love.

Ceyda: And you have a dog, right?

Pamela: I have two dogs, yes.

Ceyda: I’m interested in that from a neurobiological perspective too, although the evidence is still developing and people’s experiences differ. I adopted a cat two years ago, and caring for her has given me a very particular sense of companionship, routine, and responsibility. There is something meaningful about sharing a home with another living being who recognises you and depends on you, even without verbal communication.

I hear similar stories from many pet owners. For some people, animals may offer comfort, a sense of purpose, or a feeling of acceptance. Perhaps this is an area worth exploring more carefully in loneliness research, including the potential role of animal-assisted interventions.

Pamela: I think it hasn't gained momentum precisely because of that lack of significant correlation, which is a shame, because almost everyone you speak to who has a pet has a positive story. Interestingly, the work on robot pets as interventions for loneliness is quite positive, but it usually only happens in care homes. Is there space for robot dogs in school settings?

Ceyda: Are those robot dogs like the mechanical toy pet I had as a child, the kind that cried? Is it the same thing?

Pamela: Similar, but with technology advancing so much, I think we'll end up with robots that are far more pet-like. In the UK there have been a few studies with real pets in schools. They didn't look at loneliness, but they looked at general wellbeing, and we see nice reductions in poor mental health and increases in wellbeing among young people, more in primary schools than secondary. Again, it's about increasing oxytocin and making the place feel comfortable, welcoming and inclusive, because dogs don't care whether you've got the latest trainers or clothes. They just like you.

Ceyda: That takes me back to what you said about reading. Like you, I read a lot, and I am very interested in bibliotherapy because readers can resonate with characters and encounter perspectives beyond their own. I work in VR, where we try to simulate social situations, and I wonder whether fiction can sometimes offer another route into reflection.

Reading does not affect everyone in the same way, but it can create space to imagine another person’s experience, pause, and reflect on one’s own responses. In therapy, imagery can sometimes help people process difficult emotions, for example, imagining what they might say to someone after a break-up. Fiction may offer a gentler, less direct way to engage with similar questions: How would I respond? What might help this person? What does this situation bring up for me?

Perhaps books can expand a person’s sense of possible ways of coping, without suggesting that reading alone is a solution to loneliness.

Pamela: I love that about reading, I feel like I learn so many different ways of coping, and when I experience those things myself later, I do reflect on them. I don't know whether you get the same thing from TV and film. A lot of my peers say they don't have time to read anymore, but they do watch TV, and I'd love to know whether TV gives you the same physiological reaction, whether you're thinking about those social skills, learning new ways of doing things, not necessarily consciously. That would be another way of learning, open to more people.

With books, there's something interesting: a while ago we started looking at children's fiction to see whether there were characters who'd experienced loneliness, and how they coped with it. There were very few. So one possibility is encouraging authors to write about the experience, that might change the narrative around stigmatisation, and it gives younger people, who have fewer coping strategies in their toolbox, a way to learn about them.

Ceyda: Film therapy has also been studied, although it is less established than bibliotherapy. Films and books may offer different kinds of reflection. A film can be immediate and emotionally powerful, while a book often gives the reader more time to pause, revisit a scene, and sit with a character’s experience. It is not necessarily that one is better than the other; they may simply support different people in different ways.

Pamela: That's what I'd have suspected, because books take so much longer. You can pause and reflect, whereas a film just starts and finishes. And there's something nice about books: when you reopen one, you have to mentally reconstruct where you'd got to and what had happened, so you're processing it again. I like the idea you mentioned of a book about loneliness, fiction or non-fiction. Now I'm wondering whether one already exists. This conversation has moved from childhood moves and changing friendships to community, stigma, pets, books, and the many ways people find connection. What stays with me most is the idea that loneliness is not a personal failure, but a human signal, and that our responses to it can be as varied as our lives.

I am grateful for Pam's generosity, openness, and for helping make space for a more honest conversation about loneliness.

Further reading

• The BBC Loneliness Experiment — BBC Radio 4’s discussion of findings from the experiment, in which more than 55,000 people took part.

• Professor Pamela Qualter’s research profile — an overview of her work on loneliness across the life course, particularly among children and young people.

• Exploring the Nature and Variation of the Stigma Associated with Loneliness — a study drawing on data from the BBC Loneliness Experiment.

• WHO: From Loneliness to Social Connection — the World Health Organization’s report on social connection, loneliness, and social isolation.

• NHS: Dealing with loneliness — accessible information, practical suggestions, and routes to further support.