They lower blood pressure, strengthen immune defenses and help brain function, reducing anxiety and strengthening self-esteem. There are many benefits of hugs, especially if prolonged and daily. Returning to the topic, in view of World Hug Day, Sunday 21 January, is Emi Bondi, president of the Italian Society of Psychiatry and director of the mental health department of the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo. In the interview given to “Caffé & Psichiatria”, the thematic YouTube channel of “Psychiatry on line Italy”, created in collaboration with the Italian Society of Psychiatry (SIP), Bondi underlined the meaning and importance of such a simple and significant for our well-being.
“The hug implies two things: the first is physical contact, the other aspect is that of welcoming the other – he explains -. Hugging means having the security that someone takes care of you. You hug to console and to to calm down, to express the joy of seeing each other and when you say goodbye to a person the hug means, as that of your mother also means, go and walk in the world, knowing that they are there. This is reassuring. The physicality must not be neglected of relationships, a hug is as good as words. It is part of body language and is just as important as verbal language.” To remind us of this every year, World Hug Day, born in the USA in 1986 thanks to an initiative by the Reverend Kevin Zaborny, with the primary objective of alleviating the sadness perceived in the month of January and thus underlining the importance of the exchange. There are several studies supporting their reassuring and beneficial power. A group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, inviting a sample of 400 adults to hug each other daily for two weeks and exposing them to a respiratory virus, discovered for example that the more they received, the lower the risk of infection. But how can we guarantee ourselves the right dose of hugs every day? Researchers have no doubts, it is enough to practice contact sports, get a massage, pet a pet first or simply hug ourselves more frequently.
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