Nau Mai, Haere Mai. Welcome to Loneliness NZ
I'm feeling lonely
Let's prevent loneliness
Loneliness in NZ
Message from the Loneliness NZ Team
Welcome
Kia Ora! Loneliness is a significant issue that impacts the wellbeing of many individuals in New Zealand. Whether you are experiencing loneliness yourself, know someone who is, or are conducting research on the topic, our website offers valuable resources for everyone. We invite you to spend time with us to gain a deeper understanding of loneliness and discover effective ways to address it.
As a leading national organisation dedicated to combating loneliness in New Zealand, we provide comprehensive information and support on this pressing issue. Our goal is to enhance the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders by offering reliable resources and fostering a deeper engagement with the topic of loneliness. Explore our detailed sections to find the information you need.
This website is a dynamic and evolving resource aimed at raising awareness about loneliness. While we cannot include all initiatives related to loneliness on the website, we are always eager to learn about new studies and community efforts related to loneliness. Please feel free to share these with us
How Loneliness NZ can Help You
In addition to offering this extensive website, we actively work towards conquering loneliness through:
- Self-Help Resources: Providing resources for those experiencing loneliness.
- Counselling and Coaching: Providing interventions for those experiencing prolonged or chronic loneliness.
- Preventative Skills Training: Up-skilling individuals in the prevention of loneliness through group coaching sessions.
- Collaborative Efforts: Working with researchers, other organisations, government, and media to address loneliness.
We rely entirely on the funding that comes from our counselling, coaching and training clients, and public donations through GiveALittle. We thank all those who have contributed thus far. and look forward to your generosity in the future.
Happy web browsing and taking action to help conquer loneliness in New Zealand!
Ngā mihi,
The Loneliness NZ Team
Overview of the Website
There are many ways to focus on loneliness. Let’s show you how you might use our website to help you work out what you need.
We have pages on various situational ways of becoming lonely, which might help you better identify what you are experiencing and to consider what experiencing loneliness might mean to you and your whānau.
Some strategies for conquering loneliness include improving your ability to enjoy solitude, building and strengthening social networks, reconnecting with family and friends, and engaging with your community. See our “Get Started” guide. The “Get Started” button is on many of our pages, and at the end of this page.
Our self-help resources were initially written during the COVID period. While social distancing is no longer a significant issue, you will still find useful principles in these articles until we can update them to be more general.
For those experiencing prolonged or chronic loneliness, counselling can be a valuable intervention. Individual sessions can offer a fresh perspective on your situation. We offer an online counselling practice primarily serving New Zealand. You can find more about our counselling services under the About Us Section.
This section encourages you to learn more about loneliness.
First, we describe loneliness. At the time of writing there are various ways to conceptualise loneliness and yet not a clear definition. We draw on significant researchers to take commonly agreed information.
Not many people have a strong awareness that loneliness has both mental and physical health effects; conversely, being connected, especially with meaningful connections, improves health outcomes.
New Zealand does not yet have a strong indication of the financial costs of loneliness, and so we have a section which shows how these costs come about.
We include some of the societal drivers that have contributed to the increase of loneliness over time.
This section is intended to be factual. We include what we know in New Zealand now. We see this section as a collaboration, which means we are pleased when we get messages giving us updates or newly published research that we might have missed and would like to include on our site.
While we focus on New Zealand, we include information on what has successfully been done in other countries to combat loneliness, as these are sources to draw from to improve our own situation in NZ.
Of importance to us has been our connection to the Global Initiative in Loneliness and Connection (GILC). This organisation has leading experts in the world and is doing its best to make change at the highest levels possible. This helps individual countries with their change.
Here, we introduce our team. While we are grateful for those who have helped us in the past, we only include our current members. We have Trustees, advisers, and strategic partners. In the Counselling section, we feature our practising counsellors, details of our counselling practice, and a way for people to register and access counselling.
We have sections on plans and reports, newsletters, and articles.
We also explain how you can help. We are immensely grateful to the generous individuals who support us financially, and we provide a direct link to our Give a Little page.
Please feel free to contact us, and we will respond as our capacity allows.
Get started conquering your loneliness
Sometimes, we simply want to dive straight into how we can transform our experiences of loneliness into a more positive way of being. We have a “Get Started” guide, and the button to access it is on many of our pages, just like this one: