Given this is a thread about philosophy, and this looks like the sort of thing that sounds so true nobody bothers looking too closely at whether it is, I feel compelled to ask why it is so?
If we assume as true that consciousness/self-awareness requires others to arise in the first place—that your own model of yourself is an outcome of modelling those around you (since that implies modelling their model of you)—then it seems not such a big leap to assume that taking others out of your life, becoming a leaf node in the network so to speak, would lead to various negative effects.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what seems to happen to many people after a certain age threshold. As we become more self-sufficient, contacts become harder to initiate and sustain. Helping others, however, is increasingly more of an option as you gain age.
Addendum: the above reasoning doesn’t directly address impersonal ways to help (e.g., through donations).
I think this assumption needs further justification given that I'm conscious and self-aware even when I'm isolated from others, and there are autistic children lacking theory-of-mind while ostensibly being conscious and self-aware. I don't see an obvious link between these things.
> there are autistic children lacking theory-of-mind while ostensibly being conscious and self-aware
I can’t speak for that. I don’t think this is a great example because they still exist in social context.
> I'm conscious and self-aware even when I'm isolated from others
We still exist over time, not discretely—if you are isolated, it doesn’t mean you lose consciousness immediately. However, I suspect that after a prolonged isolation from human contact (which would be a highly unethical experiment, of course) you’d likely exhibit behaviour consistent with waning self-awareness; and I would doubt that a human that is somehow (this is even more unethical) brought up in utter and total isolation could be considered conscious in any human sense of the word.
The claim I made is broad, so it's not based on one experiment, but on numerous factors that point in the same direction. We are social creatures, and feeling like we are a part of a greater whole makes people happier. In the recent book Happy Money, the authors, two Ph.D. researchers in the area, describe experiments that indicate that spending money on others promotes happiness. Of the three components of Self-Determination Theory, one is "Relatedness", feeling connected with and caring others (contributing to a bigger whole). I'm happy to share more.
For all the things I've done that normal society considers "accomplishments" (learning to play piano, winning in competitive chess and sports, etc) none, I think, have been as good (for the world and long-term me) as the direct effects of my charitable donations to cost-effective charities. I'm 36 now, so maybe I'll have a midlife crisis in the future (I'm still young); even if I didn't have those accomplishment, I don't think I'll be able to wallow in "I've not accomplished much" when I know I prevented many many people from getting malaria (and all the negatives that accompany it).
So I'm pretty sure that "mitigate" can happen, even if not "prevent". And the phrase you use "necessarily follows" might mean you're being rather stringent, but that seems to me too-high a filter to accept good advice ;)
Years of evolution have wired into our brains that we're supposed to be interacting and working with others.
In general, I think a lot of existential crises are caused by having some psychological need not met, and so making sure psychological needs are met seems like a reasonable approach for preventing/addressing them.
Another part of this claim that's not super obvious to me is how/why _helping_ people specifically is important, as opposed other ways you can have people in your life.