An article about Loneliness was published in the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet on 28 July 2020. In the article, the psychiatrist Dr. Agah Aydin discusses modern attitudes towards relationships and the loneliness problem in relation with the pandemic. Despite the general perception that the people got lonelier during the pandemic, Dr. Aydin claims that many people in fact noticed how lonely they were before the pandemic. These people realised that they do not have anybody to phone for a chat, as they did not have a real relationship with their colleagues or with the people they just hang out with. They could not call their relatives or old friends, either, as they had not called them for a long while. As a result, they had nothing to share with them anymore.
Dr. Aydin emphasizes that it is important to have people to share our happy moments, sorrows, or surprises with. This way it is easier to recover from traumas. Those people who feel they do not have anyone to share their joy or disappointment with cannot recover from their traumas. Dr. Aydin describes trauma as having nobody to listen to you or nowhere to go when you are suffering; having your troubles be covered up or be underrated as ‘normal’. He remarks that people get sick by getting lonely. Since human beings need other people to stay mentally healthy, he considers social media as a healing reflex of the modern sick person to meet similar sufferers.
Read the full article here (in Turkish)
