Evaluation Of Travel As A Medicine Regarding Mental Health

The question I am researching is ‘To what extent could travel be seen as a medicine regarding mental health’ as there is a wide variety of evidence not only supporting travel as being mentally strengthening in people with mental health problems such as low self-esteem but also suggesting that travel can be wearing on your mental health as there can be many stress related problems that come with travelling that could worsen your mental wellbeing. However specifically focusing on the positive effects of travelling for any period of time will really get an in depth understanding of how travel can not only boost a persons happiness but also relieve stress.

Before discussing the positive impacts of travel on mental health, it is important to clarify what is meant by mental health. MentalHealth.Gov defines it as “emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices”. Researching how travel affects our mental health is so important in our day and age as travel is becoming an increasingly popular choice, especially amongst the younger generation, with over ‘304 million’ youth travellers each year globally, as it is becoming more accessible and more widely recognised amongst institutions, with companies and schools introducing gap years and the rise in social media influence with younger people, images of this lifestyle is been widely broadcasted, giving people new aspirations and goals to aim for. Interviews and articles will be the main source of research to explore this idea as it collects a more personal view of people’s individual experiences whilst travelling, but I will also be looking at scientific studies to back up these ideas with scientific evidence.

Firstly I will be exploring how travel can enhance someone’s creativity, leading on to how this can then boost a person’s happiness in life and how this relieves stress. Being involved in this alien experience can help to create and maintain strong, long-lasting relationships, igniting romance and intimacy within a relationship, therefore overall strengthening our general trust/ strength in humanity itself. All these key elements of a person’s life being boosted/ improved would theoretically lead to an improved mental wellbeing.

Enhances creativity

There has been many studies into the effect of travelling on a person’s creativity, many of which focusing on the scientific explanation for this. Candice Gaukel Andrews, a writer of a travel blog, explains that ’In general, creativity is related to neuroplasticity, or how the brain is wired. Neural pathways are influenced by environment and habit, which means they’re sensitive to change: new languages, smells, sounds, sensations, sights and tastes spark different synapses in the brain’ meaning that travelling to a new country or environment out of your comfort zone and experiencing different senses and emotions would force your neurons to respond in a new way by making new connections and in turn increasing the proportion of grey matter in the brain, strengthening synapses and increasing your health and overall mental wellbeing. A flexible mind is perceived to be a creative mind as that is how you really ‘expand’ your brain. As Debbie Hampton suggests, ’Change is mostly limited to those situations in which the brain is in the mood for it. If you are alert, on the ball, engaged, motivated, ready for action, the brain releases the neurochemicals necessary to enable brain change’, therefore being in this different and diverse environment creates an intriguing enough situation where the brain is engaged and motivated enough to understand the situation surrounding them, therefore releasing the correct neurochemicals to enable the brain to increase its neuroplasticity. F

oreign experiences also increases cognitive flexibility, the Handbook of Behavioural Neuroscience, 2016 defines cognitive flexibility as ‘a critical executive function that can be broadly defined as the ability to adapt behaviours in response to changes in the environment’. It enables individuals to reconstruct their knowledge into multiple different ways depending on the type of environment they are in. Diversifying experiences, such as unusual cultural situations that you actively become immersed in ‘violate normality, break cognitive schemas, and promote a thinking style characterized by cognitive flexibility’, travel abroad is the perfect example of such experiences. Short term, foreign travel exposes individuals into different beliefs, values and behaviours, enabling them to see multiple perspectives on the same issues through the variety of different environments, consequently being able to develop a more diverse understanding of various situations. Long term, foreign experiences can increase an individual’s natural tendency to behave in a particular way upon mental schemas and different cultural behaviour ways previously learnt, breaking old ways of thinking and creating new mental short cuts. Therefore as a result of this cognitive flexibility this leads to an individual becoming increasingly more creative by having all of these new and diverse ideas and interpretations. Numerous studies on creativity have shown that exposure to different cultures empowers people to learn, connect, and combine seemingly disparate ideas, thereby generating novel and useful insights. Seeing things you would never be able to see back at home inspires more in-depth thinking, creating ideas and plans that you would never have had the capacity to generate in your usual setting, this is therefore beneficial for business people who are in need of a new inspiration, or designers who need to think more outside the box. However there is evidence that some cases such as the isolated nature of high-altitude travel, the anxiety from the extreme efforts to reach the summit of high mountains, the cramped sleeping conditions in campsites and the difficulty maintaining personal hygiene combine to create a stressful environment for patients with psychological mental disorders, and therefore would have adverse effects on the brain being able to understand and comprehend the diverse environment they are surrounded by as the correct neurochemicals would not be available to enable brain change in the positive way described. It all relies on the individuals preference and being comfortable enough to not feel too stressed and engage positively in the new culture but also intrigued enough to want to explore and learn more about your surroundings.

Boosts happiness

Happiness can be described as ‘a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment’ People are at their happiest when they have a vacation planned, a study by the University of Surrey found, and are also more positive about their health, economic situation and general quality of life, before they have even been on the trip. ”The findings indicated significant differences between the holiday-taking group and the non-holiday-taking group in terms of current effect, their global well-being (life as a whole) and in three specific life domains: family, economic situation and health. Those who are waiting to go on a holiday are much happier with their life as a whole, experience less negative or unpleasant feelings and thus enjoy an overall net positive effect”, therefore indicating that happiness is boosted even before you travel.

Diversifying yourself in different cultures is found to be one of the biggest happiness enhancers during your travels. The pleasures of discovery, the joy of meeting people from other backgrounds and cultures and the thrill of tasting food you would not usually be able to get hold of at home are few of the many variables that causes happiness in travellers. There are four major chemicals in the brain involved in a person’s perceived happiness. As described in the previous paragraph, for someone to fully immerse into the culture and surroundings to reward themselves fully, the brain needs to be engaged and motivated enough to want to make the most of their situation. Dopamine is a chemical released by neurons to send signals to other nerve cells, one major role of which is the motivational component of the reward motivated behaviour.

Travelling can be seen as a motivational factor as seeing and experiencing things that neither you nor anybody else you know has ever seen can be hugely rewarding, finally reaching a destination somewhere where you’ve always wanted to visit or experiencing the food and culture of somewhere where you’ve always dreamed of being able to experience is a great dopamine releaser to boosting a person’s happiness through that satisfaction of completing something you were aiming for. Another chemical that goes along side dopamine is serotonin. In Developing Human Brain, Mark describes Serotonin to be important in a person’s happiness as it ‘helps to regulate anxiety, happiness, and mood. Low levels of serotonin and other related hormones are believed to be a cause and directly related to mental conditions, such as depression, anxiety, moodiness’. Low levels of serotonin can be caused from many life situations, such as a poor diet containing not enough vitamins and minerals to be able to build enough neurotransmitters or prolonged periods of stress can cause these chemical imbalances. However travel brings many experiences that facilitate serotonin release. Although not all travel is to a sunny and hot country, being out in the sun is only one way to boost your serotonin levels, with our skin absorbing the UV rays triggering this release, another one of the many ways also being plenty of exercise, which is easily achievable exploring new sights and discovering hidden treasures. These two chemicals work well together, with ‘Serotonin directly influences dopamine’, serotonin being the mood stabiliser and dopamine being the ‘reward’ chemical after the set goal has been achieved.

Another chemical being directly associated with happiness is oxytocin. ‘Oxytocin creates intimacy, trust, and builds healthy relationships’ which is one of the most important aspects of travelling to ensure that the traveller feels comfortable and able enough to approach people in these foreign places and have the confident to produce positive interactions with others. Whilst oxytocin is mainly focused on the intimacy of sex and childbirth, it is also vital for creating strong bonds and improved social interactions. Having these new interactions with people that may not even speak the same language as you creates a new kind of intimacy, releasing oxytocin which helps to strengthen these standing relationships, therefore increasing a person’s happiness.

Lastly, the final main chemical that boosts a person’s happiness is endorphins. Endorphins are also described as ‘neurotransmitters, chemicals that pass along signals from one neuron to the next’, they are often thought of as the ‘high’ you get after persevering through high intensity exercise, however laughter is also found to be one of the easiest ways to induce endorphin release, even just the expectation and anticipation of the laughter is enough to produce increased levels of endorphins. Therefore the experience of travel, creating new memories and receiving that ‘high’ is enough to encourage us to go after more new places and experience new happy sensations to feel the associated pleasure and sense of satisfaction.

Stress relief

Many people get caught up in the everyday stressors of life, the simple act of ‘getting away’ is known to help people reduce stress, whether for a day or a week away, making sure that on return we arrive as refreshed and better equipped for our usual routines. The simplest of things involved with travelling can help to reduce a person’s stress such as fresh air and sunshine, which in turn gives us more energy and also the lack of schedules, being able to do what you want when you want giving you total freedom. Researchers are now looking into what may be a most basic, and effective, way to defuse stress — by changing perception of certain types of situations so that they are not seen as stressful in the first place. Taking time away from these stressful situations that are taking up your mind gives you time to sit back and create a new perception on the stress related issues of back home. Prolonged or repeated arousal of the stress response can have harmful physical and psychological effects, including heart disease and depression.

A study was conducted by Framingham Heart Study where researchers looked at questionnaires that women had filled out for over 20 years. It was concluded that ‘women who took a vacation once every six years or less were almost eight times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack than those who took at least two vacations a year’. The study was controlled on other potential cofounding variables such as obesity, smoking, diabetes and income, therefore indicating that frequent travel is necessary for a longer and healthier life. Coronary heart disease is thought to be linked to stress in the sense that stress triggers the unhealthy responses of smoking or binge eating that then ultimately leads to the disease. Some people may choose to drink too much alcohol or smoke cigarettes to “manage” their chronic stress, however these habits can increase blood pressure and may damage artery walls. The study exhibits a strong connection between how frequent travel being an effective alternative to stress relief opposed to these bad habits listed above which only damage a person’s quality of life whilst it also doesn’t provide a long lasting remedy to the stress, which proves to have a real positive effect on the person’s life expectancy and general quality of life.

Depression is also easily gained through too much stress, or chronic stress may lead to major depression in vulnerable people. Esther Sternberg, MD, a leading stress researcher and the chief of neuroendocrine immunology and behaviour at the National Institute of Mental Health compared the stress of everyday life to emails ‘Like email and email spam, a little stress is good but too much is bad; you'll need to shut down and reboot’. Sometimes, as expressed, when the stress builds up and it becomes dangerously close to depression, a break needs to take place, in the form of either a short vacation or a full on backpacking trip, to help ‘reboot’ the mind and clear all of the built up stress and depression. Although for the most part people are generally able to de-stress whilst travelling and enjoy a positive experience of peacefulness, some people with more severe cases of mental health issues may find the stress of planning and organising a trip and then also arriving at their destination and then having to navigating their way around the foreign country may prove to be very stressful. However there is plenty of advice websites online, such as The Very Well Mind, which take into account how stressful planning a trip can be and gives useful advice for making it an easier experience. For example they suggest ‘Plan ahead… Pack smart… Dress for comfort’ which may seem like only small suggestions for what can seem like such a large commitment however these steps can prove useful in braking the trip down into small and manageable steps, giving the perception that everything is under control.

Strengthens relationships (Igniting romance and intimacy)

Travel has long term benefits for couples, a recent survey carried out from the U.S. Travel Association reveals ‘Couples who travel together report higher levels of satisfaction with their relationships’. The survey was conducted through a scoring system where they asked couples to rate their relationship based on a number of different factors. It was found that couples who travel together rated their relationship higher on every single factor, for example ‘84% of respondents who travel as a couple believe that they spend quality time together, compared to only 70% of respondents who do not’. There has been many interesting approaches and research into how travel increases satisfaction within a relationship. In 2009 the Malaysian government started a ‘second honeymoon programme’ to try and tackle the increasing divorce rates at the time, sending married couples who were having trouble in their relationship on a free two night beach resort holiday with the goal of keeping the marriage intact and the couple together. Years later, according to government statistics official in April 2016, ‘99 percent of 1,094 couples who had taken the trip had stayed together’ which begs the debate, can a free honeymoon save a marriage?

The statistics seem to present it that way, presenting that travel is able to strengthen even the rockiest of marriages, through quality time spent together away from the usual stressors of everyday life. Travel can also help couples communicate better, and vacations are seen as the perfect opportunity, being away from others, for ‘alone time’ to improve lines of communication in the relationship. In the U.S travel association survey it was found that dedicating this amount of time together in a way that you can look back on and share your experiences together means you are ‘more likely to communicate better’ and that they are also less likely to say they ‘wish their partner would do a better job sharing his or her feelings’ as from sharing all of these unique experiences together you will be able to connect on a deeper level, having gone through all the same situations, creating clear and easy lines of communication. The survey was also following this line of argument as it was presented as ‘couples who travel together report that they are more likely to communicate well with their partners than those who do not travel together (84% versus 73%)’.

Travel is also a great way to ignite romance and intimacy whether in a pre-existing relationship or a new found one, U.S Travel Organisation found that people commonly believe that travelling somewhere together is a more effective way of igniting a spark in a romance than any other gift, ‘63% of respondents rate a vacation or weekend getaway as important in sparking romance; only 36% of respondents rate small gifts as important in sparking romance, and only 15% rate big gifts as important in sparking romance’ presenting that even the more larger and significant gifts are not as effective of creating that ‘spark’ that so many relationships desire, travel is even more important than materialistic gifts. This may be because travelling gets you away from family, friends and your everyday chores that takes up so much of your time, giving you more free time to connect and create more intimacy and romance. Intimacy is defined by Counselling directory as ‘a close, familiar or unique bond existing between humans and is categorised as physical or emotional’ and is found to be one of the most important factors in keeping a relationship strong enough to survive long term. A strong relationship needs both forms of intimacy present.

Travel can do this by, as having described before, giving you more free time together to create and explore this form of intimacy physically, and the experience aspect of travelling, being able to submerse yourself into other cultures and sights, creates the emotional aspect of intimacy that can be harder to create with everyday life back home, having created all of these new experiences and memories that is unique.