When we think of health most of us focus on the need for exercise and diet, supplementing with vitamins and minerals or signing up for a year's subscription at the local gym. We often either forget or don't realize that an important aspect of being healthy as we age is the quality and depth of our social relationships. This is not a new idea.
For centuries the need for family and social ties has been expressed in folklore and cultural mores. As the Hindu proverb quoted above indicates, helping others is a way of helping ourselves. The difference now is that there is a growing and rather large amount of scientific research that proves that good social relationships have a direct affect on our health and longevity.
Sidney Cobb president of the Society of Psychosomatic Medicine states that adequate social support protects us "from low birth weight to death, from arthritis through tuberculosis to depression, alcoholism, and other psychiatric illness. Furthermore, social support can reduce the amount of medication required, accelerate recovery, and facilitate compliance with prescribed medical regimens." These are strong words and worthy of consideration if we are to fully care for our own health and the well-being of those we love.
The Medical Profession
The Medical Profession has only recently become aware that a patient's health is tied closely to the degree of social support they receive. One of the first studies to indicate this was one conducted by David Speigel of Stanford University. Speigal, a psychiatrist, led support groups for women being treated for advanced breast cancer. The cancer had spread throughout their bodies. He demonstrated that support groups improved the quality of the lives of the participants. The emotional distress that accompanies this disease was better tolerated by being in a group.
But the big surprise came ten years later when Speigel went back to the records of the women that participated in the study to see how long they had survived after the groups disbanded. Speigal's intention was to disprove the idea that mental and emotional factors could influence disease process. Instead, he found that the women in the support groups had survived twice as long (18 months on average) as those that were not placed in groups. The even bigger surprise was that the survival time of the women was even greater than cancer medications could have been expected to provide. In other words, the support group experience was more effective than any other therapy!
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