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Massage can provide benefits similar to psychotherapy for certain conditions. Massage therapy has shown to significantly reduce stress on both physical and psychological levels. While massage therapists know from experience that massage reduces stress, there is also considerable research that validates our experience.
Massage therapy can be an effective treatment by elevating neurotransmitters associated with lowering anxiety and decreasing hormones associated with increasing anxiety.
Who can benefit from massages? Everyone
Massage can improve mood and reduce depression in those living with chronic pain, as well as in cancer patients, pregnant women, and people living with chronic disease.
Military veterans indicated significant reductions in ratings of anxiety, worry, depression, and physical pain after massage in addition to declining levels of tension and irritability following massage.
A combination of psychotherapy and massage treatment helps in alleviating depression by improving mood and resetting circadian rhythms, for better sleep, and more energy with Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Massage can relieve stress in psychiatric patients, those with chronic pain, cancer patients, children with illnesses, patients with generalized anxiety disorder, the elderly, and healthy adults.
Massages for healthcare professionals in particularly for nurses during work hours can help to reduce stress and related symptoms, including headaches, shoulder tension, insomnia, fatigue, and muscle and joint pain.
What massage techniques can help mental health?
Trigger point therapy decreases heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure.
10-15min chair massages lowered measures of oxygen consumption, blood pressure, and salivary cortisol levels.
Back massage given during chemotherapy can significantly reduce anxiety and acute fatigue.
Reference: American Massage Therapy Association