WHAT YOUR BRAIN LEARNS FROM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

I am currently staying with a friend in India in the bustling, noisy, wonderful, chaotic city of Mumbai. She tells me that despite the large population, India is staring at a loneliness epidemic. And in the UK the statistics certainly tell a similar story.

A study from the Office for National Statistics using the Community Life Survey in England from 2016 to 2017, from more than 10,000 adults, found that about one in 20 people always or often felt lonely (1). Although there has been much focus on the isolation of elderly people, this study found that young adults are more likely to feel lonely than older age groups, women reported feeling more lonely than men, renters more than home owners and people who felt that they belonged less strongly to their neighbourhood reported feeling lonely more often.

I have written about the potential loneliness epidemic before and this article discusses research from solitary confinement – an extreme situation, but one which yields interesting and alarming results.

A large number of prisoners are in solitary confinement

I live a few miles from Twickenham Stadium, the home of England Rugby and the largest dedicated rugby union stadium in the world. A couple of years ago I saw the Rolling Stones in concert there alongside 82,000 other fans – a huge crowd, and that number is around the amount of people in solitary confinement today (give or take a few thousand), across state and federal prisons, secure and restricted housing units, special management units and other isolation cells. It is obviously difficult to be precise.

 The US system and associated research

Although the practice has been largely discontinued in most countries, it’s become increasingly routine over the past few decades within the American prison system. Once employed largely as a short-term punishment, it’s now regularly used as way of disciplining prisoners indefinitely, isolating them during ongoing investigations, breaking them into cooperating with interrogations and also separating them from perceived threats within the prison population at their request.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have attempted to understand the ways in which a complete lack of human contact changes people over the long term. At an American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting, a panel discussion revealed that solitary confinement is irreversibly harmful to the mental health of the prisoners and not suitable as a means of rehabilitating them for re-entry back into society (2). Craig Haney, a psychologist at University of California, Santa Cruz who’s spent the last few decades studying the mental effects of the prison system, estimates that a third of isolated prisoners are actually mentally ill (3).

What solitary confinement actually means

Prisoners live in their tiny cells for at least 23 hours a day devoid of stimuli, denied physical contact and may go years without touching another person apart from a prison guard when restrained to go for exercise. Haney and colleagues’ work through interviews and surveys shows, not surprisingly, that most prisoners suffer from severe psychological stress such with dizziness, palpitations, chronic depression (4). 41% suffered hallucinations and 27% suicidal thoughts. Over time whey withdraw from the tiny amount of social contact they have because any social stimulation makes them anxious.

Limited access to natural light

Direct neuroscientific evidence is limited as prisons don’t want their otherwise isolated prisoners to take part in research, however it is clear that as well as the effects referred to earlier in this chapter, the lack of exposure to the sun plays a role. Some brain activity is driven by circadian rhythms, which are set by exposure to daylight. Research has shown that restricting exposure to sunlight, and therefore interfering with circadian rhythms, increases the possibility of depression. There is evidence that circadian disruption alters the function of brain regions involved in emotion and mood regulation (5).  Brain architecture can also change over time. The hippocampus which is involved with memory, decision making and spatial navigation, has been found to dramatically shrink in the brains of people who are depressed or stressed for a long time.  

Workplace isolation

In the workplace loneliness is a topic of genuine concern to organisations and can have a significant influence on employee well-being, motivation, work performance and team effectiveness. Although far removed from the reality of solitary confinement, we would do well to ensure employees don’t feel isolated in their work. Over the years however, I have coached a number of clients who have felt this way and we have worked on strategies to understand why, what it is they really want to achieve, how to communicate this to their managers and teams and how to focus on their strengths and difference as positives.

How would you advise a friend or colleague who may be experiencing loneliness or isolation?

 Photo by Fabian Mardi on Unsplash

 1: Office for National Statistics (GB). (10 April 2018). Loneliness. What characteristics and circumstances are associated with feeling lonely? Analysis of characteristics and circumstances associated with loneliness in England using the Community Life Survey, 2016 to 2017.

2: Taken from The science of solitary confinement, Smithsonian.com, February 19 2014 written by Joseph Stromberg.

3: Social Psychologist Craig Haney, PhD, studies the use and impact of solitary confinement on inmates in super-maximum security, or “supermax,” prisons. He is a social psychologist and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

4: Haney, C. (2003) Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and ‘Supermax’ Confinement. Crime & Delinquency, 49 (1), 124-156.

5:  Bedrosian, T. A., Nelson, R. J. (2017). Timing of light exposure affects mood and brain circuits. Translational Psychiatry, 7 (1), e1017.