The relationship between health and volunteering

Volunteering is often its own reward. Helping others can be just as beneficial to the people doing the helping as it is for the people being helped.

Though it can sometimes be hard to find time to volunteer, a close look at some of the various health benefits of volunteering may compel adults and children alike to find the time they need to volunteer.

Volunteering and happiness

Veteran volunteers may have long suspected they’re happier when they volunteer, and research suggests that’s true. A study from researchers at the London School of Economics that was published in the jour­nal Social Science and Medicine found that the more people volunteered, the happier they were. The researchers compared peo­ple who never volunteered to people who did, finding that the odds of being “very happy” rose by 7 percent among people who volunteered monthly. Those odds increased by 12 percent among people who volunteered every two to four weeks.

Volunteering and mental health

Psychologists have long known that social interaction can improve mental health. Psy­chology Today notes that inter­acting with others decreases feelings of depression while in­creasing feelings of well-being. Volunteering is a great way to meet new people, exposing vol­unteers to people with shared interests. That can be especially valuable to people who are new to a community, helping them to avoid feelings of loneliness after moving to an area where they have no preexisting social network.

Volunteering and long-term health

Volunteering that requires social interaction can produce long-term health benefits that can have a profound impact on quality of life as men and women age. A recent study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease focused on participants without dementia who were involved in a highly interactive discussion group. Researchers compared those participants to others who participated in Tai Chi or walking or were part of a control group that did not receive any interventions. The for­mer group exhibited improved cognitive function, and MRIs indicated they increased their brain volumes after being in­volved in the discussion group. Larger brain volume has been linked to a lower risk of demen­tia. Many volunteering opportunities require routine inter­action with others, potentially providing significant, long-term health benefits as a result.

While volunteering is a self­less act, volunteers may be bene­fitting in ways that can improve their lives in both the short- and long-term.