5 Benefits Of Doing Good To Others, First: Mental Health

Illustration of the benefits of doing good to others (Pexels/Pavel Danilyuk)

JAKARTA – Kindness has a big effect on mental health. Being kind to others, or at least to those closest to you, relatives, and friends, makes a person more empathetic, compassionate, and more grateful.

According to Mental Health America reported by the PIH Health Organization page, not only positively affects psychological conditions, doing good biologically helps release a chemical known as the love hormone or oxytocin.

A professor and psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, Ritchie Davidson says that doing good to others is like building the 'muscle' of compassion. Kindness can be expressed by paying attention and wanting to help, Davidson adds. The effect is most felt is to improve the mood and the most abstract, will be felt as a positive investment in the future. In detail, here are the benefits that can be obtained when doing good to others.

1. Improve mood

Kindness has been shown to increase self-esteem, become more empathetic, and improve mood. Quoting from the Mayo Clinic Health System, kindness can make a person more focused, especially on people who tend to be anxious and stressed by social situations. Kindness also increases connectedness with others so you are less lonely.

2. Increase the effects of serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins

Kindness can change lives in a big way. It starts with an increase in the production of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters in the brain that give you feelings of satisfaction, well-being, and pleasure. While endorphins are neurotransmitters associated with happiness and kill pain.

3. Be kinder to yourself

As long as it is within your capacity, understand and help others, it will also give you what is best for yourself. On the other hand, thinking badly of others creates a negative circle that leads to insecurity and overthinking.

4. Longer life

According to author Christine Carter, people 55 and older who join volunteer organizations have the potential to live longer and experience less aches and pains. Adds David R. Hamilton, Ph.D., doing a favor on affecting blood pressure. This is the effect of oxytocin which is also called 'cardioprotective' which functions to protect the heart by lowering blood pressure.

5. Feeling happy

A survey on happiness, published by Harvard Business School in 2010, noted that in 136 countries there are altruistic people who help others, do good, empathize, and feel happy.