Working-age adults with disabilities face much higher rates of loneliness

Working-age adults with disabilities experience far higher rates of loneliness than those without, according to a new study from researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health and the Warren Alpert Medical School.

The analysis found that nearly one third of adults with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 64 reported persistent feelings of loneliness in a national survey that asked how often they felt a lack of companionship, left out, or isolated. About two thirds of respondents said they often experienced severe loneliness, regardless of the type of disability.

The work shines a spotlight on a significant but often overlooked public health concern regarding people with disabilities and the structural barriers that often limit their full participation in work, community and daily life.

Loneliness is known to be a risk factor for morbidity and mortality, but there is sparse research about loneliness among people with disabilities, especially in the age group of adults younger than 65. Our study calls attention to the need for further research focused on working-age adults with disabilities, both to characterize the factors driving their exceptionally high loneliness burden and to mitigate downstream health consequences."

Melissa A. Clark, professor of health services, policy and practice, and director of the Survey, Qualitative and Applied Data (SQuAD) Research Core

Published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the new study analyzed survey data from more than 3,800 working-age adults with disabilities in the U.S. who participated in the National Survey on Health and Disability. In one wave of the survey, conducted from October 2019 to January 2020, researchers found that severe loneliness affected 65% of participants. In a second wave, conducted from October 2023 to February 2024, that number rose to 68%.

In the first and second wave, 30% and 33% of respondents said they often felt a lack of companionship; 29% and 37% said they often felt left out; and 34% and 40% said they often felt isolated.

These rates are much higher than among people without disabilities, Clark and co-author Maggie Salinger, an assistant professor of medicine, point out. In a nationally representative survey of more than 20,000 U.S. adults, for instance, just 8% of adults reported often feeling left out or isolated and only 10% said they often felt alone.

"We think people with disabilities may be predisposed to loneliness, since disability is a byproduct of social and structural barriers that restrict people's access to full societal participation," Salinger said. "We are worried that a disproportionately high degree of loneliness could compound the array of health disparities already known to affect people with disabilities, which is why we set out to quantify their burden of loneliness and study it more closely."

The Brown team's findings also point to solutions, showing why addressing loneliness must be part of broader efforts to improve health equity for people with disabilities.

"The loneliness crisis is already on public health officials' radars," Clark said. "This study shows them how important it is to design loneliness interventions that are both accessible and tailored to people with varied disability types."