Do Jigsaw Puzzles Help With Anxiety?

According to Forbes Health, anxiety disorders affect more than forty million adult Americans, and the majority of those who struggle with anxiety do not seek treatment. Enjoying a jigsaw puzzle is a calming activity that has many health benefits, including helping to reduce anxiety.

Keeping Your Mind Active and Engaged

Doing a custom photo jigsaw puzzle requires focus. When concentrating on which pieces go where, your troubles and sources of stress can melt away. Doing a puzzle is a way to distract yourself from your problems and relax your mind.

As an Alternative to Meditation

Meditation is the go-to means of managing anxiety that’s backed by years of scientific research, but it’s not for everyone. In fact, traditional meditation (sitting quietly to calm and focus your mind) makes some people even more anxious. 

In these cases, mental health experts recommend other activities such as swimming, gardening, painting, reading, or spending time with a puzzle to achieve meditative-like effects that can soothe your mind and spirit.

Other Possible Mental Health Benefits of Puzzles

The National Library of Medicine published studies that point to puzzling as a low-cost activity that can improve the cognitive function of older adults and possibly delay the onset of memory decline that often precedes dementia.

The author of Sleeplessness also suggests doing a puzzle to help fall asleep at night. In an article published by Woman’s World, a seventy-four-year-old woman from Rochester, New York described how doing puzzles helped her manage the anxiety that had dominated her life for decades. She even hopes to eventually wean herself off prescription medications with the help of puzzles and her doctor.

For younger folks, puzzles may help those with ADHD to slow down, engage, and think more clearly as they take a messy pile of puzzle pieces and make it into a beautiful and captivating image.

Doing a Puzzle Made From Your Favorite Photo

Doing a puzzle helps redirect your attention from a stressful thought to the challenge at hand, much in the same way that meditation can. Reminiscing about a happy moment in your life is also a way to relax–so, why not combine these two relaxation techniques by uploading a favorite photo to MakeMyPuzzles?

Use our custom jigsaw puzzle printing process to make a premium-quality forty-eight-, one hundred-, 252-, 500-, or 1,000-piece puzzle from any photo that you want to enjoy for years to come. 

Let puzzles keep you calm and provide the sense of pride and accomplishment of finishing a puzzle. This soothing effect may also explain the nearly 400% increase in jigsaw puzzle sales during the pandemic, as reported by National Public Radio.

Wrapping Up

You don’t have to do puzzles for hours on end or work on the largest jigsaw puzzle to reap its benefits. Studies have shown that spending thirty minutes each day focusing on putting puzzle pieces together for eight weeks can significantly lower anxiety in adults.

Life can be stressful for all of us at times. Let MakeYourPuzzles help you create a puzzle that can help calm your nerves and bring more peace and enjoyment to your life!

Sources:

• https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/anxiety-statistics/#:~:text=Anxiety%20disorders%20are%20the%20most,with%206.8%20million%20adults%20affected.

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/when-kids-call-the-shots/202212/why-meditation-doesn-t-work-everyone

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5588550/

• https://www.womansworld.com/posts/anxiety/jigsaw-puzzles-ease-anxiety

• https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/13/833346707/with-people-stuck-at-home-jigsaw-puzzle-sales-soar