As a part of his We Are Made To Connect college tour, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy visited UT Austin on Nov. 8. Joining him was Matthew McConaughey, where the two discussed the loneliness epidemic and the importance of social connection, especially in younger generations.
The tour was inspired by the Surgeon General’s Advisory on Our Epidemic of Loneliness, a 2023 report that showed the challenges that young people face in regard to loneliness and social isolation. The interactive tour stops were meant to help students ask for support, express gratitude, and overall help improve their health and well-being.
I had the privilege of being able to interview Dr. Murthy personally, where I dove deeper with him into his medical background, his position as Surgeon General, and why he decided to do this tour to begin with.
During your time at Yale, you helped start the Healer’s Art, a four-week long elective where medical students could deal with physician burnout. Do you think that was the start of your journey to address the loneliness epidemic?
I think at the time, I thought I was addressing loneliness, but it was certainly the beginning of my journey to address well-being overall. What I saw is a real crisis of well-being among medical trainees, as well as doctors who completed their training. It was a powerful experience for me. It helped me recognize that sometimes, these crises of well-being and crises of burnout are ones that we just hide because we are ashamed of them. That’s what was happening in medical school and the hospital when I was training. I started this course, which was inspired by Dr. Rachel Remen, who is the founder of The Healer’s Art at the University of California, San Francisco. She was creating spaces for medical students to come together and talk about the core values they wanted to live out in medicine. I was taken by what she was doing and felt that it was so necessary, which is why I worked to build that course at Yale as well.
Could you explain why loneliness is so detrimental from a neurological perspective?
Most people think that loneliness is just a bad feeling — that’s what I thought when I was struggling with loneliness as a kid. It turns out it’s much more than that. Loneliness is consequential for our health. When people struggle with a sense of being socially disconnected, that actually raises their risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide. Surprisingly, it also raises their risk of physical illness, such as dementia, heart disease, and premature death. So, our social connections are vital for our health and well-being. It’s why the loneliness crisis is truly a public health crisis. It’s also why I’m deeply concerned, because one in two adults are living with measurable levels of loneliness, and the numbers are much higher amongst young people. This is a crisis we have to address right now.
Hustle culture is widely looked upon as something we should all strive for, especially on a college campus. In that process, many students prioritize their work over their mental health. What advice would you give to students when it comes to achieving a healthy balance when it comes to these two factors?
It’s really important for us all to redefine the meaning of success. I worry that we are pushing young people to chase a model of perfection and success that doesn’t always lead to happiness or fulfillment. In fact, it can be dangerous and detrimental to their mental health when it’s pursued at the expense of their relationships with one another. To me, the relationships we build on campus during our youth are just as important as any subject of study or any internship that we may get. If you care about being successful in the long term, I’ll tell you this: many people who are successful will point back to the relationships that helped them learn about a new subject or about themselves. We need relationships in our life to be successful. For too long, relationships have not been in that success equation. What is very clear is that one of the most important determinants of our happiness and fulfillment is not how rich, famous, or powerful we are. It’s actually the quality of our relationships. If we understand that early on in life, we can start to build and cultivate those relationships – because that’s what’s going to help us throughout life.
I’ve heard a lot of stories about patients on their deathbeds who bring up regrets about not spending enough time with people. In your medical experience, have you seen situations like this?
Yes, I have had the privilege of sitting with patients at the end of their life and hearing their final reflections. During this time, they don’t talk about how big their office is, how much money is in their bank account, or how many followers they have on their social media accounts. Instead, they talk about the people they loved and the people who loved them. It’s so clear in those final moments when only the most meaningful threads of life remain that it’s our relationships that matter most. We don’t have to wait until the end of our lives to recognize or act upon that. We can start right now. Investing in and building those connections is work that we have to start doing now. You can have the best education, you can get into the best jobs, and you can be well-known in your field; however, if you don’t have strong relationships in your life, you’re not going to be happy and that’s what matters more than anything.
I read your Social Advisory for 2023 on the loneliness epidemic. When it comes to the diction and connotation of words, why did you specifically chose the word “loneliness” rather than “mental health” or something else?
I did that because loneliness is an important driver of our mental health crisis, and if we don’t see it as a distinct challenge that we have to address in its own unique way, we’ll overlook it – which has happened for decades. We have been talking about mental health for years, but we don’t talk about loneliness very often. We assume that it’s a personal challenge and a bad feeling that people have to overcome on their own. It’s only by calling it out specifically that we can actually seek to address it. I think of loneliness and isolation as important drivers of a broader mental health crisis. The good news is that these are drivers that we can address. We don’t have to wait for laws to change or programs to be built – we can start in our own day-to-day lives by reaching out to people every day even if it’s for five minutes. We can make sure that when we are talking or engaging with our family and friends we’re giving them the benefit of our whole attention. This happens with little gestures like putting our devices away and engaging with them. We can look for ways to serve other people in our life. Whether it be a classmate struggling with having a hard day or if it’s someone else who is having a difficult time, just reaching out to connect with people during those hard times is essential. This lies in the fact that service is one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness. There are steps we can take towards combatting this. Through the We Are Made To Connect college tour, we are going to be challenging the students to participate in the 5-for-5 Challenge. This is where we ask them to participate in five acts of connection over the next five days. That can be either expressing gratitude to someone in their life, extending support to someone, or asking someone for help. Doing those simple acts over five days for a couple of minutes a day can actually change how we feel. We want students to experience that and ultimately build these habits of connection into their daily lives.
After completing the 5-for-5 cChallenge myself, I can say with full confidence that it has allowed me to be grateful for all that I overlook. Whether it be a message to my parents, calling my best friend, or making an effort to reach out to my peers more often, I have found methods that evade the isolation that is so easy to give into in our modern age. I am thankful to Dr. Murthy for all the wisdom he had to share, and for being such a pleasure to interview.
For more information, visit this website. Upon completing the 5-for-5 Challenge, you can use #MadeToConnect to share your journey with others.