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Survey says Vancouver a lonely place to be

One-quarter of Metro Vancouver residents suffer social isolation
lonely
Fifteen per cent of survey respondents say they feel socially isolated in Vancouver. photo Rebecca Blissett

Early results from a survey conducted to help municipalities and health authorities develop policies and programs to help residents live healthier lives suggest almost one-quarter of Metro Vancouver residents could be suffering from social isolation.

So far, the “My Health My Community” survey has discovered that 15 per cent of 9,000 respondents say they suffer from some form of social isolation and that it contributes to their stress levels.

“If you extrapolate this to the larger population, we could be looking at more than 300,000 people in Metro Vancouver having to deal with social isolation,” said Dr. James Lu, a medical health officer at Vancouver Coastal Health, in an update on the survey posted Feb. 13 on the health authority’s website. “This means there could be a significant number of individuals who have no people in their network to confide in. It appears that zero is actually the loneliest number.”

The health authority, along with Fraser Health and the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s eHealth Strategy Office, launched the web-based survey last June. Outreach teams have also reached out to segments of the population not online.

The survey asks people to provide information about their health, availability of health care, lifestyle choices, community involvement and neighbourhood. The survey will end in March.

The early results about social isolation suggest a link to recent immigrants. About one in two respondents who identified as socially isolated arrived in Canada less than five years ago. Also, more than 40 per cent of respondents who reported social isolation said they have a weak sense of belonging to a community.

The results are similar to findings of a Vancouver Foundation survey conducted in 2012 with 3,841 residents in Metro Vancouver to measure people’s connections to friends and neighbours and how engaged they were in their community.

The survey, called “Connections and Engagement,” revealed that Metro Vancouver can be a hard place to make friends, that neighbourhood connections are “cordial but weak” and that many residents are retreating from community life.

“In the past year, most of us have not participated in neighbourhood and community activities,” the survey’s report said. “It isn’t a lack of time that stops people from getting involved. The most often cited reason for not participating in neighbourhood and community life is a feeling that we have little to offer.”

The survey was noted in the “Mayor’s Engaged City Task Force” report released last month. The task force of 22 residents was assembled to gauge what could be done to make people feel less isolated, get involved in community and take an interest in civic government and elections.

The task force discovered what the Vancouver Foundation had learned back in 2012 — that the three demographic groups which stood out as disconnected from formal civic engagement were 18 to 35-year-olds, newcomers and new immigrants and aboriginal people.

“I want to make sure the task force’s final report isn’t the end, but rather the beginning of the city undertaking new ways to engage with groups who historically have been under-represented,” Mayor Gregor Robertson told the Courier in an email earlier this month.

City council is expected to review the task force report in March.

mhowell@vancourier.com
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