Media Placement
Nostalgia Won’t Fix the Loneliness Epidemic
Allie Volpe, Vox
A year after graduating from college, Chi was adrift.
She’d gone from a life of structure to one without guardrails and her mental health was declining. As a result, she distanced herself from friends and family. She left her job as a peer facilitator at a support group for people with depression and bipolar disorder and lived in an apartment and neighborhood with people she didn’t know.
“I was very, very lonely,” says Chi, whose last name is being withheld so she could speak freely about her mental health. “[I] was trying to figure out how would I structure my days. Where could I be? Who could I talk to?”
In the past, a friend had suggested Fountain House, a national mental health nonprofit that offers clinical support, housing resources, care management, and work programs for people experiencing serious mental illness, based in a physical location known as a clubhouse.