More than two in five Canberrans feel lonely at least some of the time: 12.4 per cent report feeling lonely often, while a further 29.9 per cent feel lonely sometimes.

“Loneliness is something that creeps up on people,” Lisa Kelly, CEO of the Mental Health Community Coalition ACT, said.

“As our lives have become busy and the systems we work in have become more complex, we’re required to spend more time at work and time running around doing chores, jobs, and duties. We’ve lost the ability to spend time in connection with each other. We aren’t valuing building community, building connections in community, taking time to volunteer, or having time to spend on our own wellbeing.

“Loneliness is often very structural. It’s around our transport networks. It’s around our cost of living. It’s around the opportunities to participate in free and meaningful activities. It’s around how community wraps around, supports, includes and welcomes people.”

Prolonged loneliness is closely linked with depression, anxiety, and mood disorders.

“For wellbeing and happiness as social people, we need to feel connected,” Ms Kelly said. “People’s wellbeing is enhanced when they have a sense of a meaningful, purposeful life. For most people, that’s not what they do in their employment, but how they connect with people.”

Loneliness is too often presented as a personal failure, but forming new relationships requires time, confidence, money, and access to welcoming places.

“We do see loneliness as being people just needing to get up, shake themselves off, and engage in something, but we forget that that takes courage, confidence, and capacity – and some people don’t have those things,” Ms Kelly said.

Students new to the city can struggle to find social groups, and retired public servants lose workplace friendships. During Canberra’s long winters, people stay home and hibernate.

Canberra’s dispersed layout could make loneliness particularly difficult to address.

“We have this beautiful bush capital, but it can mean that people feel very isolated and disconnected,” Ms Kelly said. “If you live in Canberra without a car, getting around can be incredibly difficult and time-consuming.”

The cost-of-living crisis will drive up loneliness by preventing people from taking part in ordinary social activities, Ms Kelly said.

“If I don’t have the money to go to dinner, to the movies, bowling, the pub, or whatever my normal sense of connection or activity might be, then that’s going to contribute to a sense of loneliness as well.”

Large events such as Floriade and the Multicultural Festival could not replace regular, neighbourhood-level opportunities for social contact.

“Those activities don’t combat the day-to-day loneliness that we experience,” Ms Kelly said. “If I don’t have money, and those events aren’t happening constantly, then it can be really easy in Canberra not to have a way to build friendships.”

People struggling with loneliness should contact the Community Information Hub to learn about book clubs, knitting groups, sporting clubs, and volunteering opportunities, Ms Kelly advised. 

Volunteering is a great way to overcome loneliness, Ms Kelly said, because volunteers are valued, welcomed, and encouraged to build social networks and teams that work together.

Ms Kelly encouraged socially confident people to invite those around them.

“Reach out to your neighbour. Say hello. Be the one brave enough to say in the workplace, ‘Should we go for a drink?’” she said.

Ms Kelly said governments should invest in free and low-cost local activities and protect public places where people could gather without being expected to spend money.

Libraries, community centres, and other ‘third spaces’ could give people somewhere to meet, take part in activities, and gradually build a sense of belonging. In June, however, the ACT Government announced that libraries would close on weekday evenings and Sundays to match usage hours.

“Those spaces [are] places where people can congregate, where activities can occur, and where people can walk in and start to build a sense of community,” Ms Kelly said.

High-rise residents might live close to hundreds of people, but still feel deeply isolated. The government should also fund community development workers and programs to build connections within neighbourhoods and apartment buildings, Ms Kelly said. 

“Loneliness is combated when government provides the spaces and resources to promote community; when people who are not lonely reach out to people who are lonely; and when people who are lonely accept those invitations.”