Media release

From: Springer Nature

Touch likely improves mental and physical health

Physical touch from both humans and animals can reduce pain, feelings of depression, and anxiety in adults and children, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis, published in Nature Human Behaviour. The research suggests that touch is beneficial across a large number of both physical and mental health outcomes — both for healthy individuals and those in a clinical setting — and for all ages.

Touch is of great importance to humans — it is the first sense to develop in newborns, and the most direct way in which we interact with the world. Although previous research has indicated that touch is beneficial in both physical and mental health domains, it has focused on specific health outcomes or has not considered the influence of other variables, such as the types of contact or who applies the contact.

Julian Packheiser and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of a total of 212 studies, involving a total of 12,966 individuals, to explore the health benefits of touch. The authors found strong evidence of health benefits in adults that engaged in touch with other humans or objects (including robots and weighted blankets). However, larger benefits to mental health were found when humans touched other humans as opposed to touching an object. Likewise, Packheiser and colleagues did not observe differences in physical or mental health benefits in adults based on the type of touch (such as massage or hugging). This result was also seen in newborns.

The frequency of touch also seems to matter as more frequent interventions had more beneficial effects. Touch interventions were effective in improving the mental health of clinical and non-clinical populations alike. The authors also found improved health outcomes when the head (for example, the face or scalp) was touched as opposed to other body parts such as the torso, and that unidirectional touch had benefits over bidirectional touch.

The authors suggest that future research should explore the effectiveness of different touch interventions in large, controlled trials to ensure the robustness of these results. In addition, further research might examine whether touch interventions are equally effective across different cultures, as most of the current research stems from cultures from middle- and high-income countries.