Science confirms touch alleviates anxiety amid spiking levels globally

While the type of touch doesn’t appear to matter too much, touching on the head or face reportedly works best. In addition, shorter and more frequent touches garner more positive reactions.

‘More consensual touch events throughout our day can help alleviate or potentially buffer against mental and physical complaints,’ Dr Helena Hartmann, the paper’s co-author, tells the Guardian.

‘We need to undertake more research on the potential of weighted blankets or social robots to improve people’s wellbeing, especially during contact-limiting situations like the recent Covid-19 pandemic.’

Published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour and conducted by a team from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, the research encompassed 212 previously published studies and included a statistical analysis of 85 studies involving adults and 52 involving new-borns.

As it states: ‘We were aware of the importance of touch as a health intervention, but despite many studies, it remained unclear how to use it optimally, what effects can be expected specifically, and what the influencing factors are.’

‘Our work illustrates that touch interventions are best suited for reducing pain, depression, and anxiety in adults and children as well as for increasing weight gain in new-borns.’

Of course, while a large meta-analysis like this helps detect larger patterns across populations, responses to touch still vary from person to person. The researchers also emphasise that touch must be consensual for it to be beneficial.

For many of us though, the data shows that spending more time in physical contact with others can bolster many aspects of our health, which is perhaps to be expected given that touch is the first of our senses to develop, and something we usually miss when it’s not there.

Who would’ve thought, eh? A hug a day really does keep the doctor away.