In ancestral times, being part of a community was vital to our survival.

There’s now considerable evidence that suggests that, on the whole, compared with people in previous decades, we spend less time with family and friends.

We have fewer close friends and are less involved in our communities. This affects our physical health as well as our mental health - research shows that the health risk of social isolation is comparable to the risks of smoking, high blood pressure and lack of exercise.

It’s not surprising then, that The Mental Health Foundation calls relationships “the forgotten foundation of mental health and wellbeing”. They explain:

The longest-running study on happiness found that the quality of our social connections is the single biggest predictor of happiness.

Our relationships have more power over our happiness than genes, IQ, social class, money, or fame.

The director of the study, Robert Waldinger, notes, "People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner, and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely."

When it comes to priorities for mental wellbeing, it’s clear that our relationships deserve a top spot.

You might be interested to know that working on your mental wellbeing could result in you feeling more sociable.

It’s been found that compared with people experiencing a neutral mood, people experiencing positive mood show greater sociability, sense of connection, self-disclosure, trust in others, and compassion.

Plus, the more time people devote to generating positive emotions in themselves, the more pleasant their interactions with others become. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, a leading researcher in the field of positive emotions, labels this the ‘upward spiral’ of positive emotions and health.

Her research suggests social connection is a key factor in happiness and is associated with changes in our vagus nerve, an important component of the parasympathetic nervous system which controls our relaxation response.

Fredrickson carried out a study exploring this with Bethany Kok and colleagues in 2013. Half of the study participants attended a 6-week loving-kindness meditation (LKM) course.

In the course, they practiced cultivating positive feelings of love, compassion and goodwill toward ourselves and others. They were asked to practice meditation at home, but how often they meditated was up to them. The other half of the participants remained on a waiting list for the course.

For two months, participants in both groups reported their meditation, prayer, or solo spiritual activity, their emotional experiences and their social interactions within the last day. Their vagal tone - the activity of their vagus nerve - was assessed twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of the study.

The findings suggested that positive emotions, positive social connections, and vagal tone does indeed give rise to an upward-spiral dynamic.

They found that greater positive emotions prompted people to see themselves as more socially connected. Over time, as moments of positive emotions and positive social connections increased, vagal tone also improved.

 Fredrickson explains:

Build Your Mental Wellbeing Toolkit

Research shows that self-help materials are often enough for people to overcome mild to moderate mental health difficulties without professional support.

If you’re interested in a self-guided program that includes tools from CBT, ACT and more, be sure to check out The Mental Wellbeing Toolkit. It's "like 10 therapy sessions in one."