Forget the pills, just play some bingo

Loneliness, it turns out, doesn’t just make you feel bad, it can make you physically ill.

There’s no magical cure, either, in the form of a swift, effective vaccination or a neat little pill for a complaint that increasingly infects modern Canadian society.

But there is, thankfully, a new, innovative and slightly surprising treatment that started being offered by Ontario’s medical community in a pilot project this fall.

Instead of prescribing a drug for someone, doctors in 11 community health centres are trying to heal patients by sending them to the local bingo hall or museum. Or by teaching them to knit, fish, sing in a choir or play the ukulele.

The technical term for this approach is “social prescription.” It might sound weird, but there’s evidence it works. And so we would say, keep giving it a try.

The need for out-of-the-box thinking is acute. Loneliness and social isolation are growing problems in Canada, especially among seniors. According to Statistics Canada, 16 per cent of seniors say they feel isolated from other people.

The phenomenon may be a byproduct of the more densely populated urban communities we inhabit, where neighbour doesn’t know neighbour, where the old, social safety nets provided by religious and community groups are tattered and where it’s so easy to retreat into a small room and play computer games or with a cellphone. Whatever the cause, the malady is real.

Loneliness, however, is not merely an emotional issue. It threatens physical health and well-being. It’s associated with higher levels of cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. And as loneliness becomes more pronounced, it results in physical challenges such as increased risks of heart attack and stroke.

When it comes to meeting every legitimate need, Canada’s health-care system is already under stress. Costs are soaring. Wait times for care are often regrettably long. Prescription drugs are expensive and, for many, unaffordable.

The need for alternative — and, in this case, more holistic — approaches is obvious.

The idea behind social prescriptions is that healthcare practitioners prescribe artistic and social activities for people with mental health difficulties. It started in the United Kingdom and has spread to other places. It caught on in Montreal before Ontario decided to try it out.

Good for Ontario. The 2016 review of a similar program in Gloucestershire, England, conducted by the University of West England, showed a 23 per cent decline in hospital attendance and emergency admissions as well as decreasing dependence on primary care in the first six months after a social prescription. In addition, doctor appointments dropped by 21 per cent.

We eagerly await to see what Ontario’s experience will be. The pilot project has seen a woman with post traumatic stress disorder sent to tai chi classes — and she felt great. Other people have been sent to the Royal Ontario Museum. And somehow, gazing at dinosaur bones and Egyptian mummies made them feel better. People in such settings connect with other people and feel less alone.

The full menu of programs in this pilot project is free of charge to participants. But so far, the costs — a $600,000 provincial grant covers everything — seem reasonable. And if it removes the need for more expensive treatments, the money devoted to social prescriptions will be money well spent.

It’s gratifying to see what the Ontario government is attempting and accomplishing. Even so, to contemplate the debilitating sense of alienation that grips contemporary Canadian society is to arrive at a simple but hard-to-answer question:

Why can’t we just be kinder to each other?