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Altruistic
Actions May Result In Better Mental Health From
InteliHealth News, Center
for the Advancement of Health People who offer love, listening and help to
others may be rewarded with better mental health themselves, according to
a new study of churchgoers in the September/October issue of Psychosomatic
Medicine. The study is one of the first to track the
positive health benefits of altruistic behavior, say Carolyn Schwartz,
Sc.D., of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and colleagues. “The findings really emphasize how helping
others can help oneself,” Schwartz says. Schwartz and colleagues analyzed data
collected by the Presbyterian Church for 2,016 congregation members. The
members were asked about how often they “made others feel loved and
cared for” and “listened to others” in the congregation, and how
often they received this attention in return. The members also answered survey questions
about their mental and physical health. Most of the congregation members
were in good physical and mental health to begin with, experiencing only
normal levels of anxiety and depression. While the researchers did not find any
significant differences in physical health specifically related to giving
and receiving help, they concluded that giving help was a better predictor
of good mental health than receiving help. But feeling overwhelmed by others’ demands
— giving until it hurts — can have negative psychological effects,
according to the researchers. “Although our findings suggest that people
who help others experience better mental health, our findings also suggest
that giving beyond one’s own resources is associated with worse reported
mental health,” Schwartz says. Church leaders, older individuals, women and
those who took satisfaction from prayer were more likely to be helpers
rather than receivers, according to Schwartz and colleagues. People who give help to others may be less
likely to focus inward on their own anxieties and depression or more apt
to see their own troubles in perspective, leading to better mental health,
say the researchers. Alternatively, it may be that “people who are functioning well psychologically are better able and hence more likely to give help,” Schwartz says.
Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
