Christmas essentially is a religiously designated season for giving but research shows becoming more giving round the year can significantly boost physical health and mental wellbeing. However, the frenzy of Christmas shopping and the planning for parties can paradoxically feel a bit of a stretch and distraction when this idea of giving to others in a deliberate and constructive manner is entertained. It is now clear that doing good for others without any expectation of reward can confer better physical and mental health and even help them live longer.
A US-based altruism and health researcher Stephen G. Post puts it this way; “A remarkable fact is that giving, even in later years, can delay death. The impact of giving is just as significant as not smoking and avoiding obesity.” Indeed, one study of 2025 older residents of California found those who volunteered for two or more organizations had a 44 per cent reduction in mortality over five years even after accounting for factors like differences in prior health status just as giving in a more material sense can boost mental wellbeing while “hands-on” and face-to-face helping have an enormous boost for wellbeing. This may take the form of volunteering or practicing acts of kindness as well as spending for others. Studies have established that those who spent money on others or on a charity are happier than those who perpetually spent on themselves. The problem with giving at Christmas and any other religious festival that prescribes giving is that we get sucked into the commercial and the religious rituals that have become completely divorced from any sort of intrinsic meaning. However, if the focus on why you’re giving is to make another person happy it can really make you feel better with profound physical changes that underpin that.
Although how giving boosts health is not fully understood, reduction in exposure to stress hormones may be one factor. It takes so much stress to get competitive and accumulate material things at the expense of others. Knowing we’ve done something to improve the life of others not only boosts our self-esteem and gives us a sense of purpose; it also shifts our attention away from our own stresses and worries.
Giving also integrates you more solidly and cohesively into your supportive social networks making it more likely you’ll have helping behavior returned to you when you need it especially when you suffer a loss in your own life. A good number of mental illnesses are caused by major life events that challenge and overstretch the psychological resources of individuals to a point that requires some form of external support that can augment the coping mechanisms.
20-year follow-up studies at Harvard University have mapped thousands of people and shown those who pay attention to others tend to move towards the centre of their social network, whereas those who don’t get pushed further and further to the edges as the network changes over time. This is very crucial since shared social support is one of the things that would probably play a major role in longevity with some great impact on mental well-being. Some of the other changes that happen when we give have even been observed in brain scans. Studies involving functional magnetic resonance imaging scans have shown donating money to charity with well-thought-out meaning triggers the same pleasure and reward systems in the brain as food and sex. If you don’t have time to commit to regular volunteer work, you can experience the benefits of giving by practicing simple acts of kindness which could be providing shelter for the homeless ones, phoning or visiting a housebound person, Collecting goods for a charity, and supervising a thoughtful and considerate distribution, letting someone in front of you in the traffic or in a queue especially giving consideration for the elderly, granting scholarship for an indigent student, surprising a colleague at work with useful assistance concerning a problem, helping to provide care for wandering mentally ill or setting aside funds for the widows. However, it is important that the primary motive is to enhance someone else’s well-being not just about personal aggrandizement which will invariably lead to resentment if such acts are not properly appreciated.
The prevalent harsh socioeconomic situation in itself is responsible for the increase in mental illness which can be relieved through social support intervention from the privileged which invariably accrues as sound mental well-being for the giver. However, greed serves as the template for developing different kinds of mental illness which are prevalent in leadership positions in Nigeria whether in religion, politics, academics, or business. Unfortunately, this has set a template that guarantees a perpetual increase in the incidence of mental illness for both the poor and the rich.
