Panorama 21.03.2025

Euranet Plus Panorama is a weekly news review that showcases our network’s wide-ranging coverage of EU-related stories.

Radio România Internațional, 24.03.2025, 16:21

Feeling lonely? Join the crowd

Perhaps counterintuitively, loneliness is no longer the preserve of the elderly. Indeed, Europe’s youth seems to be facing a surge in mental health issues, including those related to social isolation.
An astonishing 13 per cent of Europeans surveyed as part of a Joint Research Centre study published last year reported that they feel lonely most or all of the time, with a further 36 per cent sharing these feelings at least occasionally.

A problem confined to the elderly?

It goes without saying, of course, that loneliness can have a major impact on the health and wellbeing of older people.
In their latest weekly podcast, new Euranet Plus member The Europeans discuss the latest Eurostat statistics on life expectancy. Life expectancy varies significantly from country to country, but people in Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Italy live the longest, on average.
While this is often attributed to the famed Mediterranean diet, experts have suggested that other factors could well be at play – including the fact that fewer elderly people live alone in Mediterranean countries. Less than a quarter of over-65s live on their own in Spain, for example, compared to more than four in ten in Latvia, the EU country with the lowest life expectancy.
Yet a recent study on the health effects of gentrification, relocation and housing insecurity on the inhabitants of the city of Porto, Portugal, suggests that all is far from rosy in Southern Europe.
As Ana Isabel Ribeiro, an epidemiologist and health geographer at Porto’s Institute of Public Health, explains to Rádio Renascença, Porto residents forced to move out of the city centre due to changes led by demand from tourists and the wealthier segments of society are showing signs of deteriorating physical and mental health.

Ana Isabel Ribeiro, Epidemiologist and Health Geographer (in Portuguese):
“We have seen that gentrification is associated with an increase in loneliness, depression, social isolation and even a deterioration in inhabitants’ physical health. That’s why we’re calling it a public health issue. The housing crisis is a public health issue and should be treated as such.”

What does she mean by this exactly?

Ana Isabel Ribeiro, Epidemiologist and Health Geographer (in Portuguese):
“People living in poorer quality houses and with greater residential instability – in other words, those who move house more often, especially in the case of the elderly – showed significantly higher levels of indicators such as loneliness. They also had a lower quality of life and, in general, a less favourable perception of ageing.”

The youth of today

But it is not only the ageing population that is at risk of loneliness and isolation, says German political author and consultant Diana Kinnert, who has studied the health, social and political implications of a lack of ‘belonging’.
Kinnert highlights, in particular, the insidious impact of loneliness on young people and how surprised many people are to hear that members of the so-called ‘connected generation’ are lonely at all. Austrian member station Agora asks why this might be.

Diana Kinnert, Political Author (in German):
“Many young people are connected to each other, but the quality of their relationships reflects the demands of our actual society, of our market economy – namely to be flexible and interchangeable, to adapt quickly, to be spontaneous and non-committal. But a lack of commitment is not necessarily the greatest asset for a modern young friendship.”

Kinnert goes on to explain that loneliness goes above and beyond a mental health issue; that it has implications for our very democracy too.

Diana Kinnert, Political Author (in German):
“When the infrastructure is cut back or destroyed to such an extent that the church is no longer there, the bus no longer runs, the marketplace has gone, and even the pub is no longer worth running, in the end, there are right-wing extremists, or other kinds of extremists, who pipe up: ‘We’re having a neighbourhood party in our garage, we’re the neighbourhood watch, we’re [giving away food]…’ and people are going to come. I think that with many authoritarian movements, you have to examine whether it is actually agreement with the content or agreement in terms of identity; the fact that they are saying, ‘You are welcome here, you count here, we have not written you off.’ I believe that we are underestimating this social need.”

She believes that all levels of government, from city council to European level, require a cross-disciplinary body that takes responsibility on this issue.

In Belgium, RTBF interviews French neurologist Servane Mouton on a connected issue (if you pardon the pun). Namely, the impact of screens and social media on young people’s physical and mental health.
Mouton co-chaired the group of experts commissioned by the French government to investigate the multiple effects of screen exposure on young people.

Servane Mouton, Neurologist (in French):
“Digital tools (smartphones, tablets, computers…) have an impact on physical health because they have physical characteristics. And all the things you mentioned – the effects on sleep, the effects in terms of sedentary activities, the effects on vision – depend on the physical characteristics of the tool. Then there’s mental health, but mental health is also linked to physical health. For example, chronic sleep deprivation, of which screens may be one cause, will compromise overall health, including mental health, by encouraging anxiety and depression. A lack of physical activity and a sedentary lifestyle can also affect mental health. And finally, there are the issues regarding content. Exposure to pornography, for example, but also – and this has been the focus of much legal attention for several months now – social networks, with their inherently toxic economic model that is based on the manipulation of attention.”

Her conclusions on the subject are somewhat demoralising.

Servane Mouton, Neurologist (in French):
“By manipulating the normal functioning of our brain to ensure that we use it as much as possible, the primary culprit is the industry that develops this type of application: social networks, online video games, shopping platforms and so on. And the second, on an equal footing, is the regulator, the legislator. In other words, the states that have not been able, or perhaps not wanted, or at least not strongly enough, to introduce regulations to prevent this type of practice. Today, this is having consequences that we can only stand by and observe, with few effective means of action in the short term.”

But is there really nothing to be done?

In Estonia, psychologist Anna-Kaisa Oidermaa is closely involved in a campaign to find the happiest person in the country. She talks to Kuku Raadio against a backdrop of Estonian health statistics showing that new cases of anxiety disorders are up 15 per cent on pre-COVID levels, and the use of antidepressants has doubled in the last ten years.
Although there may be very tangible reasons underlying the increase in mental health disorders – the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing war in Ukraine, and the deteriorating economic outlook, to name but a few – Oidermaa is a firm believer that a little positivity can go a long way.

Anna-Kaisa Oidermaa, Psychologist (in Estonian):
“There is too little value placed on an element that supports mental health – namely the collection of positive, good emotions, bringing them into your life. We should not think of this as a kind of forced positivity: ‘think positively, keep smiling’. That’s not it. It’s about habit and practice: how do I find the good among the bad? How do I pay attention to the good things? It is also better and easier to solve problems when our mindset is a little more hopeful, a little more optimistic than reality might suggest.”

Bulgarian psychiatrist Vladimir Sotirov, former chair of the Sofia Psychiatric Society, believes that such a change in attitude needs to happen at the very top. He is urging the Bulgarian government to think more positively about mental health and its care.
BNR speaks to him during a week in which the country’s psychiatric doctors and nurses have taken to the streets in protest.

Vladimir Sotirov, Psychiatrist (in Bulgarian):
“The decision-makers responsible for the functioning of the mental health system are victims of the same prejudices that affect much of society. The most common prejudice is that mental illness is incurable. This leads to a belief in hopelessness and the futility of investing in mental health, as it is assumed that such investments will never pay off because ‘these people will never recover’. This is not true, of course. But when people in power hold such views, they neglect the issue. Driven by the same misconceptions – that investing in mental health is meaningless because those affected are hopeless and doomed – they ignore the need for reform. In general, there is a low level of health literacy, and more specifically, a lack of awareness regarding mental health.”

The European Commission adopted its first comprehensive and cross-sectoral approach to mental health in 2023, as a pillar of the European Health Union, funnelling some 1.23 billion euros into tackling challenges in this field.
But with one in five young Europeans facing mental health issues, and even more reporting emotional difficulties over the last 12 months, MEPs are calling on the Commission to take further swift and concrete action. European Parliament vice-president Nicolae Ștefănuță, for one, who wants to see psychological help more widely accessible. Radio România shares his comments, made at the February plenary session in Strasbourg.

Nicolae Ștefănuță, Vice-President of the European Parliament – Greens/EFA, Romania (in Romanian):
“Many of us believe that we live in the century of artificial intelligence, of TikTok, of technology. In actual fact, we live in the century of loneliness […] I am concerned about young people, who are facing anxiety, depression, burnout. What can we say to them? Should they be telling us that their hair is falling out from stress? That they have no help in their most difficult moments? That at 20 they are already exhausted? That cannot be the answer. I stand here in front of you, as vice-president of the European Parliament, but also as a man who benefits from and enjoys therapy, saying that we must help the young people of Europe. No one can be left behind! They are not alone! And – not only in rich countries that can afford it, but in every member state of the European Union – we should have a minimum number of therapy sessions guaranteed for everyone. Because mental health is not a fad; it is health, full stop.”

Two important, related pieces of legislation are in the pipeline, the Digital Fairness Act and the Right to Disconnect from Work, but neither of these are imminent.

Meanwhile, an EU Council meeting on health issues is set to take place on 13 June. It is expected to adopt conclusions on the mental health of children and adolescents in the context of digitalisation and the promotion of preventive healthcare.