The Surprising Mental Health Benefits of Volunteering
A program in Connecticut offers psychotherapy in exchange for voluntary service in the community. But the act of volunteering itself can have mental health benefits of its own.
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Empowerment, agency, and control. Impact, self-esteem, and social connections. A sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of contributing and with all that, a feeling of reward.
All are elements in the psychological impact of volunteering.
And all are critical pieces of Volunteers in Psychotherapy, a West Hartford, Connecticut, program that offers pure talk-therapy sessions in exchange for voluntary service in the community. The longstanding, forward-pushing nonprofit was designed as a corrective to the usual medicalized approach to mental healthcare, which too often strips the autonomy of patients and too often prioritizes pharmaceuticals over in-depth therapy. Many people can’t afford mental healthcare out of pocket; when it is covered by