A hidden loneliness crisis is haunting Italy
In 2019, Marinella Beretta, 70, was living by herself in a quaint villa wedged between the foothills of northern Italy’s bucolic pre-Alps and Lake Como’s shores.
Having no family other than a few cousins in a neighbouring region, she had recently sold her property to a Swiss entrepreneur. Her friends were few and far between, and acquaintances with whom she’d only had perfunctory interactions thought she seemed increasingly reserved.
One autumn day that year, Beretta suddenly felt unwell. A chronic sufferer of hypertension, she sat by her kitchen table and died. No one was there to witness her death or make any calls. She was simply left by herself, perched on her chair.
Days, weeks, months, and eventually years, passed.
The pandemic struck. Letters arrived. Payments from the Swiss buyer were deposited in her bank account. Hedges, left untrimmed, grew into an unsightly mess.
It was only when neighbours complained the overgrown vegetation had become unsafe that firefighters finally discovered her mummified body on 6 February 2022, more than two years after her death.
‘Our family model has exploded’: The roots of Italy’s loneliness crisis
Ermanno Olmi’s now-iconic 1978 film, The Tree of Wooden Clogs (L’Albero degli Zoccoli), is a tale of rural families making ends meet in 19th-century Italy and one of the many classics that has nourished the collective image of Italian society: one of close-knit families and inter-generational communities, where the young look after the old, and the old impart their wisdom on their grandchildren.
Yet the current reality presents a lonelier picture of an ageing society with diminishing networks, broken communities and increasingly forlorn pensioners.
Approximately 28% of Italians over the age of 65 live by themselves, a figure which jumps up to nearly 50% for women above 75.
Various European social surveys from the 2010s list Italy as having among the highest rates of loneliness in the EU.
A 2021 global survey is even more damning, with the country ranking fifth worldwide for self-reported loneliness.
Moreover, Italy was hit early and hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, which particularly ravaged north Italian cities like Bergamo and left countless elderly individuals widowed or alone.
For Marco Trabucchi, the president of the Italian Psychogeriatric Association (Associazione Italiana di Psicogeriatria) — who once labelled the loneliness crisis as “the leprosy of our century” — the pandemic did little more than exacerbate an already dire situation.
“The elderly were less affected by lockdowns, and we don’t have data showing an increase in loneliness,” he told Euronews. “Old people were alone before COVID, and remain alone after it.”
For Trabucchi, rather, the roots of Italy’s loneliness crisis are in a profound cultural shift that has been taking place over the past few decades.
“The whole idea of Italy having a ‘communitarian culture’ is a myth,” he stated. “It may have existed 20 or 25 years ago, but certainly not today.
“The traditional model, whereby the widowed grandparent would be looked after by their family, has exploded,” Trabucchi added. “Ours is a rapidly ageing society with a huge number of elderly people. The social hubs which once brought people together — be it the church or even secular community centres — are dying, and society is growing increasingly selfish.”
Beyond changing social dynamics, however, part of the problem resides around the elephant in the room: mental illness.
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