Massage Therapy for Mental Health
- Abigail Boster
- Sep 20
- 2 min read
The month of October highlights Mental Health Awareness! We are in a very vulnerable time in our history. So how can massage even help?
Massage therapy is more than a spa day when done right; it connects your body to your mind, which can disconnect itself daily with how much we have on our minds today. Between social media, stress of finances, work, school, politics, and safety, everyone could use some love and reconnection.
Mental health awareness is very personal to me because I lost my little brother to a battle with mental health, and October was his birth month. So being educated about our mental health and raising awareness is so important; it can mean life or death in the worst cases. Taking care of ourselves and expressing our feelings in healthy ways should be seen as courageous, loving, and a great strength, and this is how we heal ourselves and others.
When we get stressed, our cortisol spikes, causing inflammation in our body. This leaves us more susceptible to diseases and injuries. This can also affect our ability to think clearly.
About 23.1% of U.S. adults have a mental illness, which is about 1 in 4 adults, and anxiety disorders affect 19.1%. The percentages could be higher, but these are the recorded stats! National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH):
Massage can help reduce cortisol and increase serotonin and dopamine.
Dopamine drives motivation, serotonin steadies mood, and cortisol is the stress hormone, and too much cortisol can trigger inflammation and wear the body and mind down.
A study led by Tiffany Field et al. shows that massage therapy can drop cortisol levels, which is great news because I believe in combination with deep breathing, exercise, nutrition, etc., we can do a lot to help ourselves reduce diseases, and this is when we can use massage therapy for mental health.
This helps us help our family, friends, and community. We can help lift each other up when we connect and take care of ourselves. We definitely can not pour from an empty bucket.
Massage isn’t the whole answer, but it can be part of a powerful toolkit, alongside breath, movement, nutrition, and connection to bring us back to balance. Healing isn’t selfish, but it’s how we keep showing up for each other.
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