The Loneliness Project
In 2024, I began a round-the-world research project to find out why chronic loneliness and social isolation is becoming an epidemic across the Western world.
A Winston Churchill Fellowship would take me from the UK to The Netherlands, Sweden and the US.
Along the way, I collected 31 interviews with some of the loneliest and most isolated people from all walks of life, of all ages, in wildly differing circumstances. Their deeply moving insights into the human condition are available to read below.
I was also invited to collaborate with doctors, social workers, policy makers, academics and local Governments who are taking big strides in the management of this emerging public health crisis in their own countries.
I hope my findings are thought-provoking, and in 2026, will continue to provide momentum for social change here at home.
Report now available to download HERE
“We used to get 100 calls a month from the same three ladies in the one village, all in their 60s. We’d take the ambulance round and find them in a real state. Just not coping. But they didn’t need an ambulance. What they needed was company.”
— James Lewis, aged 62, Former paramedic, now Co-founder of Dogs for Health, UK
Recent Media
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Love Machine - The Weekend Australian Magazine
Alaina is all AI loved up. Anton is newly AI single. Everywhere online, Replika's matchmaking software is playing cupid between human and digital avatars - but the results are mixed (and often disturbing).
8 November 2025
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The Kids Are Not Alright - The Australian Weekend Magazine
The Smartphone generation want our help. It’s time to listen.
16 August 2025
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Together, Apart - The Australian Weekend Magazine
It’s a hellish sort of limbo for the loved ones of dementia patients.
7 June 2025
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The House of Wellness Radio
Ros Thomas joins The House of Wellness to discuss her research into loneliness and The Loneliness Project.
13 April 2025
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A Matter of Life and Death - The Australian Weekend Magazine
Perth mum Nicole Watts shares her extraordinary and brave story of motherhood and mental illness. What’s it like for her to parent while living on the edge?
5 April 2025
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ABC Local and Radio National - Conversations with Richard Fidler
Loneliness - it’s not only you.
Journalist Ros Thomas spent a year travelling around the world to research something all of us have experienced — loneliness.
26 March 2025
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All By Myself - The Australian Weekend Magazine
In a world with 8.2 billion people, there’s an epidemic of loneliness. What’s causing it - and can it be solved?
15 February 2025
During the past 50 years, people of all ages, in all places, have embarked on a remarkable social experiment – for the first time in recorded history, great numbers of us have begun to live alone.
In Australia, chronic loneliness is at record levels amongst single young men, middle-aged divorced men, the bereaved and the elderly, especially women.
Why the exponential rise? There are some obvious reasons: we’re getting divorced more often, having fewer children and living longer. Covid threw these factors into sharp relief. And there are more subtle reasons at play — the ever-increasing digitisation of society, the rise of social media replacing face-to-face engagement and a corresponding and puzzling unravelling of connections within neighbourhoods.
This year, I have been travelling around the world studying effective community models for the treatment of chronic loneliness.
In my many years as a journalist and an advocate in Aged Care, I have witnessed first- hand the isolated and often invisible world inhabited by carers and the elderly.
And as a 24 year old, I was engulfed by loneliness after moving to a new job in Sydney. Home was a rented flat in an unfamiliar suburb. Work colleagues were indifferent to the new girl. On weekends, I became a lonely observer of other peoples’ happiness. In streetside cafes, I was the solitary figure contemplating the parade of couples and families. It seemed everyone but me took the comforts of belonging for granted.
The body understands severe loneliness as an emergency: it raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which leads to a rise in blood pressure and heart rate, poor sleep patterns, depression and cognitive decline.
The US Surgeon General has declared loneliness a public health emergency— worse for your heart than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increasing the risk of an early death by 26%. Put simply, a lonely heart is a broken heart.
In 2024, I travelled to the UK, The Netherlands, Sweden and the US on a Winston Churchill Fellowship interviewing doctors, academics, social workers and policy-makers about their best-practice management of this emerging public health crisis.
But always, my research begins at home. The latest census told us one in four Australians are now living alone. We have become a lonely nation.
If this project speaks to you, or you know someone who might benefit from The Loneliness Project, please get in touch.
All 31 interviews with some of the world’s loneliest people are available to read on this website. If you would like to share your story, I’d love to hear from you.