It is widely recognized that social relationships and affiliations have powerful effects on physical and mental health. Although many social scientists from Emile Durkheim on have written about the critical role of social relationships in health outcomes, it was not until the 1970s that epidemiologists turned their attention to this issue.



In the first of these studies, in Alameda County,California (Berkman et al., 1979), men and women who lacked ties toothers were 1.9 to 3.1 times… Continue