第二步：精读重点段落

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

第一段：
ALL the lonely people, where do they all come from? When The Beatles wrote Eleanor Rigby in 1966, they helped perpetuate the stereotype that loneliness is a problem of elderly and isolated people. Maybe it was true 50 years ago, but no longer. Loneliness can and does affect anybody. And yet we barely talk about it.

• perpetuate 使持续
• stereotype 模式化观念

第三段：
It is not hard to find plausible reasons. More people live alone, and the number of single-parent households is rising. Education and work mean that many of us live far away from our families. At the same time, technology has changed the way we work, shop, socialise and entertain ourselves, largely serving to reduce the amount of face-to-face contact we get. This is exacerbated by an insidious “cult of busyness” that elevates productive work time above everything else.

第五段：
This is not for lack of trying. In 2010, UK charity the Mental Health Foundation published a report called “The Lonely Society?”, which flagged up the mismatch between the seriousness of the problem and its relative neglect by health professions and obscurity in the collective consciousness.

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

Everyone gets lonely. We must admit it or bear the consequences

导言：
Loneliness is one of the neglected public health issues of our time. We need to get behind campaigns that highlight its toll on mental and physical health.

• get behind 支持
• toll 严重影响，代价

第一段：
ALL the lonely people, where do they all come from? When The Beatles wrote Eleanor Rigby in 1966, they helped perpetuate the stereotype that loneliness is a problem of elderly and isolated people. Maybe it was true 50 years ago, but no longer. Loneliness can and does affect anybody. And yet we barely talk about it.

• perpetuate 使持续
• stereotype 模式化观念

第二段：
If loneliness were just a social problem, it would be bad enough. But it is also a public health disaster, linked to a slew of chronic illnesses. Surveys suggest it is a routine feature of modern life. In the UK, for example, the Co-op and the British Red Cross found that more than 9 million adults are always or often lonely. Children and people with disabilities also report high levels of loneliness.

• a slew of 许多
• chronic 慢性的
• Co-op 合作社

第三段：
It is not hard to find plausible reasons. More people live alone, and the number of single-parent households is rising. Education and work mean that many of us live far away from our families. At the same time, technology has changed the way we work, shop, socialise and entertain ourselves, largely serving to reduce the amount of face-to-face contact we get. This is exacerbated by an insidious “cult of busyness” that elevates productive work time above everything else.

• Plausible 可信的
• Exacerbate 加剧
• Insidious 阴险的
• Cult 狂热

第四段：
This adds up to an epidemic of loneliness – and that is not a word that is used casually. Chronic loneliness is dreadfully damaging to people’s mental and physical well-being. As a public health problem it is up there with smoking and obesity, yet it hardly registers in the public mind. For campaigners, it has proved a lonely furrow.

• Epidemic 流行病
• Dreadfully 可怕地
• Furrow 沟壑

第五段：
This is not for lack of trying. In 2010, UK charity the Mental Health Foundation published a report called “The Lonely Society?”, which flagged up the mismatch between the seriousness of the problem and its relative neglect by health professions and obscurity in the collective consciousness.

• Flag 标注，强调
• Mismatch 匹配不当
• Obscurity 晦涩，不明

第六段：
The report closed with a series of recommendations. The first was to increase awareness of loneliness, in part to tackle the stigma and shame attached to it. The second was for doctors and social workers to gain a better understanding of its potential consequences, and to educate them about the services that are available to deal with it.

• Stigma 耻辱，污名

第七段：
Those recommendations are as pressing now as they were at the time. If anything, the trends driving increased loneliness have become even more apparent, and our scientific understanding of its impact has become much clearer. We also know how to intervene, quite easily and cheaply. Curing loneliness might just be the most cost effective public health intervention available.

• Intervene 干预

第八段：
There may not be much we can do about social trends driving the epidemic, but our collective denial of it still needs to change. There are welcome signs that this is happening. Before she was murdered in 2016, British MP Jo Cox was working to create a national commission on loneliness. That has now been realised posthumously, bringing together MPs and various campaigns to raise awareness.

• MP 议员
• Posthumously 去世之后地

第九段：
In her maiden speech to the House of Commons in 2015, Cox famously said “we have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”. One of the things we have in common is our propensity for loneliness and our unwillingness to talk about it. Until we change that, we will keep on asking ourselves “where do they all come from?”, as if loneliness is something that happens to other people.

• Propensity 习性