What it found
This study finds that remote work increases time spent alone and worsens mental well-being, including higher use of mental health services and prescriptions. The shift to remote work accounts for roughly a third of the rise in isolation and mental distress observed between 2011-2019 and 2022-2024. Remote workers who live alone experienced an increase in days spent alone roughly ten times greater than that of remote workers who live with others.
Why it matters for practice
This gives employers and workplace programme designers a quantified link between remote work arrangements and mental health burden, not just a plausible association. The finding on employees living alone points to where intervention or monitoring should be targeted first, rather than treating remote-work risk as uniform across a workforce.