Humans are social animals. We need others to survive. We even have evolved to pick up social cues from a person in seconds. So, how come we don't pay much attention to our social health?
When we get back pain or headache or any other physical sickness, we turn to a medical doctor, a physician. Physicians are literally medical practitioners, who use their knowledge of medicine to help cure your physical complaints. We all have been to the doctor at some point in our lives. More often than not, however, we also have other complaints. Complaints of the heart and the mind. Back in the old days, they'd call this the complaint of the soul and people would turn to priests for help, that's what religion was for. These days, many of us are farther away from the church (and other religious establishments for that matter) and only go there on special occasions like weddings, funerals or baptism. We are not as tied to our priests at a time when the pace of life has become so fast that we are all stressed out.
We simply don't have enough time for ourselves and keep our hearts and minds in check. We are often in the daily grind, working 8-10 hours a day then coming home to a family tired and just looking forward to bed to start the same thing all over again the next day. We are all so tired we either spend our time at home passively keeping ourselves entertained by social media, television or the internet when we have not even had the chance to process what had happened in our day.
How did we perform? How our colleagues/partner treated us? How did our boss/friend speak to us? How can we get better? These questions remain in the unconscious, unprocessed for long periods of time. Some of us are lucky and have the social support system in place that keeps us sane. You talk to a partner, a colleague or a friend. But for many, this is just not an option perhaps because they don't have much time or that the cause of social stress is coming from the person you expected will support you. So, we keep the thoughts to ourselves until at a certain point, we have a break down. When a breakdown happens, we are referred to a psychologist and maybe even a psychiatrist. So technically, there is no place in between to relieve yourself of stress. You either have no problems or your problems have already made you ill that you need to see a psychologist. Interestingly, schools and universities normally have conselling facilities to help their students to cope with their everyday problems, to lessen stress and improve their well-being, but for most of those who work in companies, there is no such option.
The normal person, who just has the usual amount of everyday troubles and stress, have nowhere to go even though the solution is very straightforward, you just want to talk about it. Here's where social scientists can be of help. We are trained to think theoretically about the troubles of society, how societies think and what moves people. But most social scientists are confined to studying only the society and not the basic unit that constitutes it, which is the individual. Most social scientists forget that the individual stands at the very core or our theoretical knowledge making us being an appropriate guide especially when it comes to helping a person politically navigate their social lives. Just as a medical doctor can have a medical clinic, social scientists should also have a social clinic. This social clinic is distinct from a psychology practice since we are not dealing with people who have passed the breaking point and got sick, but rather we deal with people who just want to talk and figure out ways to improve the social aspect of their lives. If such a social support is available to the wider population, perhaps the feelings of loneliness, self-doubt and stress can be alleviated. We are all here for each other and we need to talk to one another more. We are, after all, social creatures.
