Family doctors ill-equipped for loneliness epidemic

New research has found significant numbers of lonely people attending GP surgeries, with doctors saying they are ill-equipped to help them.   A new poll of UK GPs, carried out for the Campaign to End Loneliness, found that three quarters of family doctors (76 per cent) report that between one and five patients a day attend their surgery primarily because they are lonely. This could mean that as many as one in 10 patients arriving at GPs surgeries are there not because they are medically unwell, but because they are lonely.   Worryingly, almost half (49%) of the doctors questioned