Campaign to End Loneliness GPs Survey

ComRes interviewed 1007 UK GPs online between 16th and 22nd October 2013. Data were weighted to be nationally representative of all General Practitioners in the UK by former SHA region. 

Date Published: 01 Apr 2014

Categories: Health | Professionals | Social | UK

Description

Doctors need to take more responsibility for loneliness 

 

New research commissioned by Campaign to End Loneliness has found many doctors are failing to make the link between loneliness and damaging health behaviours like smoking, drinking, and poor diet. 

 

A new ComRes’s poll of UK GPs has found that family doctors are under-estimating the health risks loneliness. 36 per cent of doctors questioned didn’t think loneliness made a significant contribution to early death.

 

When asked if loneliness should be treated as a public health issue more than half (52 per cent) of the doctors questioned agreed it should be. [7] However, only three in 10 (28 per cent) thought Clinical Commissioning Groups should take responsibility for commissioning services to alleviate and prevent loneliness.

 

ComRes interviewed 1007 UK GPs online between 16th and 22nd October 2013. Data were weighted to be nationally representative of all General Practitioners in the UK by former SHA region.