Touch and hugs can meaningfully improve both physical and mental health, especially by reducing anxiety and depression. Researchers observed this healing effect in both children and adults.
Touch helps not only healthy people but also patients in clinical settings. A team at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany analyzed data from 212 studies that included 12,966 participants across ages and genders. They found clear evidence that touch benefits people whether the contact came from another person or from therapeutic devices — such as robots and weighted sensory blankets.
Benefits were strongest when the touch came from another person rather than from an object. But Julian Packheiser, the study’s lead author, and his colleagues found no difference in benefit between types of touch: touching, hugging, and massage were about equally effective. These findings applied to participants of all ages, from adults to infants.
The researchers also found that more frequent tactile contact produced greater benefits for well-being. Touching the face or scalp led to better outcomes than touching other body parts. They also found that one-directional touches were more effective than random ones.
“We have provided clear evidence that sensory interventions are beneficial for both physical and mental health, for healthy individuals as well as clinic patients, and for people of all ages,” the team concluded.
The study was published in Nature Human Behaviour.
