Loneliness - A Medical Disorder?

I've been thinking about something lately. You know how there is all sorts of controversy as to whether depression is a medical disorder? I think my friends on this blog have enough personal experiences (i.e., people they know) to argue that it definitely is. I was recently contemplating the connection between loneliness and depression...and looked up a few psychiatry articles that specifically conceptualized and operationalized loneliness.... All of this showed me that loneliness, like depression, is not just a vague concept - that it can be articulated and measured. So, my question is, how come loneliness has absolutely no negative stigma associated with it - like depression does? How come loneliness is not considered a medical disorder, but simply a social state? You might say that this is because there is no chemical imbalance with loneliness. But if research is showing links between loneliness and, say, Alzheimer's and heart disease, then there's something neurologically or biologically or chemically going on. Any thoughts?

Zimbardo

So, Beth and Kristy and I often talk about Phillip Zimbardo and his Stanford Prison experiment...and Justin and I talk about deindividuation and disinhibition when we write about kids doing bad things online.

This is a good article from one of my favorite nerd sites about Zimbardo presenting on his new book.

I don't think it's the situation that conduces to evil behavior by individuals. I also don't think that teaching kids "heroism" will counter situational influences. I think it's the lack of a basic moral compass at the onset (and the boldness to act on it in the face of pressures to take the easy way out), and the increasingly relativistic culture in which we are immersed where conscience is rarely if ever implicated - and if it does surface, is quickly suppressed. Often, conscience is the *only* factor that would choose the right behavior - and if that is eliminated or discarded, self-interest and entropy will reign.