This Thursday, the 6th of March 2025 will be World Book Day, and at Burton and District Mind, we will be taking this opportunity to talk about the positive impact that reading can have on your mental health.
World Book Day is an annual celebration of authors, illustrators and the general joy of reading. It is usually an opportunity to encourage younger people and children to read, with the ‘World Book Day’ Charity giving them the option of picking up a free book. However, reading is something that can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of age.
Usually, the benefits of reading are thought to be associated with learning, such as improving your vocabulary, but it can even be great for your mental health too.
It can be a great stress relief, especially at the end of a long day when you need something to help you unwind before bed.
This is partly because when you read, it normally will take up your whole concentration, so if there were things in your mind before reading causing you to feel stressed, perhaps this will provide a useful distraction from those things.
Or sometimes we can just really need to dive into a distant fantasy world and escape from the stresses of life.
It can also be fantastic for improving your attention span, and concentration skills so if you are experiencing stresses related to struggling to focus in other parts of your life this could be useful.
Additionally, with a struggling attention span, we can often feel the need to use our phones whilst doing other activities, which can lead to an increased ‘doom scrolling’ across social media.
That itself can be very negative on your mental health, so some time away from your phone can be very positive for your mental health too.
When you read books, you’ll experience many different characters, stories, and experiences and whilst this may not apply to all aspects of the story, you may find things that you can relate to your own life. Perhaps familiarities between a character’s personality and your own, or shared experiences. Whilst the story may be fiction but having this relatability to the story, can be useful in helping you feel heard and validating your experiences.
In addition to that, you may read about things that take place in these stories that you can bring with you into your own life. Such as empathy, as you’ll be experiencing the emotions of other characters/people or even seeing how those characters interact with others who may be going through a difficult time. For people who may struggle with knowing how to handle situations such as this, this can be an opportunity to ‘practise’.
Something we often speak about at Burton and District Mind across our social media or even our blog posts is the impact sleep can have on our mental health. This is to say that if you are experiencing poor sleep, you will usually find it has a negative impact on your mental health too. However, studies have shown that reading can improve sleep quality! Plus it can be a good opportunity to avoid screens before bed, which due to the blue light emitted can be associated with disrupting our sleep!
These are just a few of the potential benefits that you can experience from reading books, and how they can benefit your everyday life!
So this Thursday why not pick up a book and take part in #WorldBookDay 2025!
Do let us know what you end up reading, we’d love to know!
If you need support for your mental health, there is help available. We at Burton and District Mind are here for you and offer various helpful services that may appeal to you.
You can find lots of information about these services here -> www.burtonmind.co.uk
Or you can contact us here;
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