“Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call.
And I'll be there. You've got a friend.”
~ Carol King
Overview
The benefits of friendship may seem like common sense, but they’re even more plentiful than we think! Friendships contain social benefits, mental health benefits, physical health benefits, cognitive benefits, and so much more. Friendships can make us feel happier in challenging moments, give us plans to look forward to after a long week, and create some of our most fond memories throughout our lives. Friendships can reduce stress and loneliness, provide emotional support, boost happiness, and even help our lifestyle habits.
Let’s explore some of these benefits a little more to truly understand the remarkable benefits of friendships in many aspects of our lives.
Social benefits!
When thinking about the benefits of friendship, the social benefits likely come to mind first for many, and these benefits are entirely accurate! Friends can help us improve our sense of belonging and feel connected to our community.
Friendships can improve our awareness of others, empathy, and social skills. They also increase our support network and allow us to feel seen and heard. Friends can positively influence our lives, bringing out the best in us and pushing us to become the best version of ourselves as we bond over shared interests. Friends can encourage us outside of our comfort zones, create monumental moments of growth, and serve as added support layers along the way.
More specifically, regarding our social development, friends forge positive communication skills, help us with our conflict resolution abilities, encourage positive emotional regulation and trust building, help us maintain positive collaboration and teamwork abilities, and influence our cultural competency.
Mental health benefits!
The mental health benefits of friendships are plentiful. Since friendships enhance our support networks and sense of belonging, they can also significantly improve mental health outcomes. Friendships lead to reduced risk of depression, lower anxiety levels, a greater sense of purpose, emotional resilience, and decreased loneliness (including in high-stress moments or transition periods).
Physical health benefits (which also impact brain health!)
Friendships have many physical health benefits. As we know, physical health and brain health are directly related!
Friendships actually reduce the risk of chronic illness. Social connections are correlated with decreased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Loneliness can increase stress, which can then lead to increased risk for chronic illness, making social connections a great way to help prevent disease.
Furthermore, social interactions can even boost our immune system! Friends lead to healthier lifestyle decisions too, frequently, which can then increase our physical health. Friends may keep us active (such as friends that you may go on walks or to the gym or even to the beach with), and they can help us avoid harmful habits that deteriorate our health. Reduced stress from friendships can also improve our sleep quality which has substantial physical, mental health, and cognitive benefits.
Cognitive health benefits!
Speaking of cognitive benefits, there are a lot of ways in which our friendships help our cognition! Generally peaking, all of the physical health benefits mentioned (such as encouraging exercise, lowering the risk of disease, preventing unhealthy habits, etc.) directly benefit our cognitive health, as physical and brain health are directly related! Social interactions can also increase our brain plasticity and ability to change with experiences (check out our post on neuroplasticity for more information). Furthermore, friendships can even help our memory. Social interaction is thought even to prevent neurological and neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia. Lastly, social interaction can reduce inflammation in the body (thus helping the brain) and help with neurotransmitter regulation.
Ways to foster these friendships
Fostering these friendships can be easy in some moments and challenging in others, depending on what else we have to prioritize!
One way to help this is to stay in touch with people we’ve met in the past and just check in on them or give them a call or shoot a text! Reconnecting with old friends and reaching out to individuals we have enjoyed spending time with can have huge benefits. Making time to connect with family members and get to know our neighbors is super valuable, too!
In conclusion…
Friendships have a LOT of benefits that span a variety of perspectives. Fostering these connections can help us even more than we think in the long run.
The post “Benefits of Friendship: Enhancing Mental Health, Connection, and Joy” does a fantastic job of further damaging the self-esteem of autistics who experience social interaction very differently than what your article claims. I believe you have a responsibility to post inclusive material. I am hurt and appalled that this was posted and harmed by reading it. You can do better.