In short, yes, massage therapy can help with depression for many people.
This largely comes down to the fact that massage therapy can be used to treat various conditions, disorders, and ailments that are linked to depression, such as chronic pain and insomnia to name a few.
While everyone’s needs are unique, if you suffer from depression, finding a good massage therapist can be an effective method for helping your condition in a variety of different ways.
Ways in which massage therapy can help with depression include, but are not limited to:
- It reduces pain
- Promotes better sleep quality
- Relieves stress and anxiety
- Helps you to relax and be present
1. It Reduces Pain
One of the most significant ways that massage therapy can help with depression is that it reduces pain.
Pain can have a detrimental impact on your quality of life and mental health, especially if you’re dealing with chronic pain that controls many aspects of your life and prevents you from doing various things.
The link between chronic pain and depression is evident from countless studies. For instance, one study found that ‘60.8% of people with chronic pain had severe depression’, highlighting how closely they’re linked and how much of an impact pain can have on a person’s life and mental health.
Massage therapy can help to reduce chronic pain by ‘decreas[ing] tension and reduc[ing] stress’. This, in turn, helps to alleviate both the physical and mental effects of chronic pain, including the feelings of depression associated with chronic pain.
2. Promotes Better Sleep Quality
Next, massage therapy can help with depression in that it promotes better sleep quality.
Sleep disorders such as insomnia are closely linked with depression. In fact, around ‘three quarters of depressed patients have insomnia symptoms’.
Massage is known to improve your blood circulation and can work wonders in terms of relieving pain, which is one of the worst culprits for poor sleep quality and restless nights.
In relaxing your muscles and body, massage therefore provides you with a natural way of managing poor sleep and sleep disorders, such as insomnia.
This is hugely beneficial if you don’t want to be reliant on taking medication like benzodiazepines that are known to be associated with various side effects, including depression.
As such, if you struggle to sleep, receiving massage therapy can improve your sleep as well as alleviate symptoms of depression that are caused by insomnia or a lack of sleep.
3. Relieves Stress & Anxiety
Another way that massage therapy can help with depression is that it relieves stress and anxiety. Anxiety is one of the leading mental health disorders in the UK, with ‘over 8 million people experiencing an anxiety disorder at any one time’.
Regardless of what’s making you feel stressed or anxious, whether it’s a high stress working environment or a circumstantial stressor, massage therapy can encourage you to relax and take your mind off it.
As anxiety goes hand in hand with depression, it makes sense that massage therapy could have a positive effect on alleviating symptoms of depression through relieving your stress and anxiety.
4. Helps You To Relax & Be Present
Everyday stresses that are out of your control can take hold of your life, quickly becoming the norm. However, if stress is allowed to dominate us, our minds can become foggy and it can be hard to envision a way out, which is when depression can creep up on you.
Massage therapy can help with depression in that it helps you to relax and be present, as the gentle movements on the body induces ‘the relaxation response’, which is also known as ‘an involuntary response of the nervous system to massage techniques and touch’.
As massage therapy promotes relaxation, then, receiving a massage can help encourage you to be present in the moment.
This, in turn, can put your worries into perspective and help you to look at the bigger picture through massage therapy.
Hopefully this article has given you a better understanding of whether massage therapy can help with depression. If you’re experiencing symptoms of depression or helplessness, it’s important to book an appointment with your doctor to discuss the various options available to manage your condition.
We are Fox Chiropractic: specialists in the diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal injury or pain. For more information about the services we provide, check out our website or get in touch to speak to a friendly member of the team on 07540 942 448 / info@foxchiropractic.co.uk.
Written by Jemima Thomas for Fox Chiropractic.
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