Strong social relationships support brain health and even reduce morbidity (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). The brain reacts strongly to social rejection, which is associated with an overload of information processing functions, negative emotions and a stress response and may reduce the individual’s well-being and expose them to various diseases. Exclusion and loneliness can also increase the risk of memory disorders, for instance (Shen et al., 2022).
The National Brain Health Programme highlights the sense of belonging and inclusion as a cross-cutting outcome objective for all age groups. This objective is embedded in the concept of fellow citizenship.
Social exclusion causes emotional pain, which stimulates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. Consequently, social rejection causes fear, and the threat of it activates the brain’s emotional and stress networks in the same way as the threat of physical injury. The factors that support the experience of inclusion and belonging provide psychological safety and protect health with many various mechanisms. For these reasons, it is important to provide people with psychologically safe environments where they can feel that they are respected, important members of a community. This reduces harmful stress and lets the brain’s information processing functions to focus on purposeful activities or, for example, creative processes, supporting the individual’s active agency.
Sources:
Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010
Shen et al., 2022
Deci & Ryan, 2009
Ryan & Deci, 2017
Eisenberger et al., 2003
Martela & Ryan, 2016
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