Health & Medicine
Stress Is Lowered When You Help Others
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Dec 15, 2015 04:53 PM EST
Helping others doesn't just attract positive karma.
Science shows us that it can actually help lower stress in our lives and improve overall mental health, according to a news release.
"Our research shows that when we help others we can also help ourselves," study author Emily Ansell, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, said. "Stressful days usually lead us to have a worse mood and poorer mental health, but our findings suggest that if we do small things for others, such as holding a door open for someone, we won't feel as poorly on stressful days."
During the study, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Yale University School of Medicine recruited 77 adults between the ages of 18 and 44. Every night over a two-week period, participants received an automated phone reminder prompting them to report any stressful life events experienced at work, school and home. They also completed a daily survey that measured emotion by asking them to rate their mental health each day on a scale of 0 (poor) to 10 (excellent.)
Study results showed that participants who performed more helping behaviors had no dips in positive emotion or mental health and were less likely to get overly upset in situations of high stress. On the other hand, those who reported less acts of kindness showed lower levels of positive emotion and higher negative emotion when it came to stressful situations.
For the future, researchers would like to determine if completing more acts of kindness can help improve mood and mental health. However, the current study is somewhat limited as the study participants involved were all Caucasian.
The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Related Articles
Meditation May Help Reduce Racial Prejudice
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
See Now:
NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
TagsHealth, Human, Stress, Karma, Positivity, Yale University School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Emotion, Mental Health, Clinical Psychological Science, Association for Psychological Science ©2024 ScienceWorldReport.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The window to the world of science news.
More on SCIENCEwr
First Posted: Dec 15, 2015 04:53 PM EST
Helping others doesn't just attract positive karma.
Science shows us that it can actually help lower stress in our lives and improve overall mental health, according to a news release.
"Our research shows that when we help others we can also help ourselves," study author Emily Ansell, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, said. "Stressful days usually lead us to have a worse mood and poorer mental health, but our findings suggest that if we do small things for others, such as holding a door open for someone, we won't feel as poorly on stressful days."
During the study, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Yale University School of Medicine recruited 77 adults between the ages of 18 and 44. Every night over a two-week period, participants received an automated phone reminder prompting them to report any stressful life events experienced at work, school and home. They also completed a daily survey that measured emotion by asking them to rate their mental health each day on a scale of 0 (poor) to 10 (excellent.)
Study results showed that participants who performed more helping behaviors had no dips in positive emotion or mental health and were less likely to get overly upset in situations of high stress. On the other hand, those who reported less acts of kindness showed lower levels of positive emotion and higher negative emotion when it came to stressful situations.
For the future, researchers would like to determine if completing more acts of kindness can help improve mood and mental health. However, the current study is somewhat limited as the study participants involved were all Caucasian.
The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Related Articles
Meditation May Help Reduce Racial Prejudice
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone