Health Highlights: Reading and mental health
Key Takeaways:
- Experts say reading just six minutes a day can improve one's health.
- The benefits of reading include reducing blood pressure, improving memory skills and quality of sleep.
- Reading fiction is most helpful to increase skills such as empathy and the ability to understand people.
Whether you're curled up on the couch or tucked away in bed late at night with a good mystery, experts say there's little doubt that reading is good for our health.
Research shows 75% of adults participate in some form of reading. However, another study shows the number of kids between the ages of 9 and 13 reading for fun has dropped in the last decade.
According to Ashley Pratt, a psychotherapist with OSF HealthCare, most people need just six minutes of reading time a day to see some help benefits. Especially for children.
“It's one of the best things we can do for our mental health and our physical health," Pratt says. "It's been shown to greatly reduce our stress levels, lower our blood pressure, improve our memory and cognition, and it improves our sleep quality.”
Pratt says reading fiction tends to be the most helpful when it comes to increasing skills such as empathy and our ability to learn and understand people.
She adds that reading has been shown to increase resiliency and an ability to handle difficult emotions, as readers learn about characters and challenges they face.