What is social support?

What is social support?

Social support is much more than just having company. It is being able to rely on people we can trust, who provide us with a sense of belonging, who protect us, care for us and help us in times of difficulty. This support can come from our family, friends, work colleagues and, of course, from our pets too.

It is important in protecting our physical and emotional wellbeing, defusing the negative effects of stress and promoting healthy behaviours.

How does social support influence our physical and mental health?

A range of international institutions highlight the crucial impact that social

support has on people’s physical and mental health. The WHO (World Health Organization), for example, has recently launched the Commission on Social Connection, which highlights the fact that a lack of social connection significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, dementia, depression and anxiety. In fact, people who lack social connection have a 30% higher risk of premature death, an impact that is comparable to smoking, excessive drinking or obesity.

What is social health and how does it affect us?

Social support forms part of the wider concept known as Social

Health. Social health includes three essential dimensions: social isolation,

social support and loneliness.

• Social isolation: an objective measure of the quantity and quality of our social relations. How often we interact with others and with whom.
• Social support: a subjective measure that reflects how we perceive the availability and effectiveness of the individuals around us. The number of people around us, how we experience their closeness and support are all important.
• Loneliness: the subjective and emotionally negative experience of feeling isolated. It depends on the balance between the amount of social contact we would like to have and the amount we actually have. Thus, a person can be isolated, but not feel alone. They can be surrounded by many individuals and still experience a profound feeling of loneliness and lack of support.

What can we do to improve our social health?

Social Health is determined to a great extent by general factors, such as work conditions, access to education and public services. However, there are two strategies that depend largely on us that can help us to improve it. One is spending time with family and friends; fostering healthy social relationships requires investing time and attention. The other is choosing our relationships and, whenever possible, trying to surround ourselves with individuals who contribute positively to our wellbeing.

In this sense, pets are a very important source of social support for people. They are always there for us, they don’t judge us, and they make us feel loved and valued, especially in difficult times or when, for various reasons, we can’t access other sources of support.