Telephone counseling: Loneliness a growing problem

Diaconia Saxony is seeing an increase in calls to the telephone counseling service about loneliness. "The increasing number of calls about loneliness is a serious warning signal," said Dietrich Bauer, Chairman of the Board of Diakonie Sachsen. With 23 percent of calls, loneliness is now the most frequent topic of conversation at the telephone counseling service - ahead of health problems (18 percent), family conflicts (17 percent) and depressive moods (16 percent).

"Loneliness is not an individual failure, but an expression of social fractures," said Bauer. He is calling for reliable funding for telephone counseling. Currently, the service is mainly funded by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, the Catholic Diocese of Dresden-Meißen and private donations. Last year, around 55,000 calls were registered with the telephone counseling service in Saxony.