The problem is that people feel isolation acutely at this time of year.
Many Italians are hopeful that a visit here on Friday by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain will mark not just the beginning of a new closeness between the two nations, but also an end to Italy's keenly felt isolation in Europe.
I have rarely felt isolation in DR Congo, but this first day's trek crossed between the territory of two different armed groups, their territories eerily demarcated by emptiness, where the sound of our footfall seemed amplified.
Once on the registry, many queer people feel isolation within the community of registrants and in treatment.
(Of course, no one who has felt isolation in their school days needs a report to attest to these truths; experience alone is enough).
Another, published in 2015 by the University of Bedfordshire, looked specifically at the trauma experienced by victims, and concluded that it was "broadly comparable" to the symptoms seen in PTSD, with victims highly likely to feel "isolation, irritability and guilt".
Some participants, in an attempt to decrease felt isolation, traded off knowledge imbalance against increased risk of increased stigmatisation when using the better known CF as a knowledge anchor.
Despite older participants saying that current medical knowledge of PCD was superior to when they were younger, they nevertheless felt isolation and resentment towards medicine, the sense of isolation being heightened by GPs' unawareness of PCD, and participants feeling merely a "curiosity".
Despite the development of specialist palliative care and primary care models of community based service delivery, people who are dying, and their families/carers, can experience isolation, feel excluded from social circles and distanced from their communities.
