Fun Friday Facts #133: Can Knitting Treat PTSD?

Image by user Johntex from Wikimedia Commons

I’ve really been getting into crochet lately, which is an ideal hobby to indulge in when one has cats. My mother taught me how to crochet years ago, but I hadn’t done it in quite some time before I decided to make Jim a tentacle scarf for Christmas. Making the scarf rekindled my interest in the hobby, which gives me something productive to do with my hands while Jim and I are watching TV, and is a lot less frustrating than coloring extremely intricate pictures in adult coloring books.

What am I supposed to do with this, Dr. Coloring Book???

Indeed, journalist Temma Ehrenfeld, writing in Psychology Today, speculates that the post-modern urge to constantly play with our phones stems, not from a deep moral failure as my last boyfriend would have you believe, but from a desire to make or do something with our hands. Researchers have found that knitting (and I’m going to lump in crochet with that, which is not the same as knitting, BECAUSE IT’S BETTER), like yoga and tai chi, can elicit a meditative state of mindfulness. The repetitive motions involved in knitting and crocheting are physiologically soothing, slowing the heart rate and breathing, but the activity itself is complicated enough to distract the brain from the intrusive thoughts that often come with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder; knitting and crocheting can even relieve chronic pain, because it distracts the brain from processing pain signals.

WHO'S IN CHARGE NOW, BRAIN?
Image by user flora from Wikimedia Commons

That’s according to Betsan Corkhill, whose research with Cardiff University in the UK found that, the more time people spend knitting, the happier they are. Corkhill surveyed 3,500 knitters for a paper published in the British Journal of Occupational Therapy; 81 percent of those surveyed reported feeling happier during or after a knitting session, while 54 percent of respondents suffering clinical depression said that knitting made them feel “happy or very happy.”

Occupational therapist Victoria Schindler tells CNN that knitting’s repetitive motions quiet the parasympathetic nervous system, to quell the fight-or-flight response that’s out-of-control in so many patients suffering from anxiety and PTSD. Knitting may further stimulate the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain, accounting for the feelings of happiness knitters reported to Corkhill.

Of course, it’s not just the knitting or crocheting itself that makes us happy. The hobby brings with it a host of other mood-boosting activities, such as choosing pretty yarns, attending knitting circles (or, as I like to call them, stitch-and-bitches), producing finished products, gifting or donating knitted items, and receiving praise for one’s skill. In addition, knitting, crocheting, and other crafty hobbies boosts your feelings of self-efficacy, or your perception of how capable you are in the face of challenges and disappointments. Knowing that you can crochet your boyfriend an awesome tentacle scarf will leave you feeling more confident in your ability to nail that big job interview, or at least that’s the idea, but I’m still awful at job interviews so check and mate, science!

Perhaps the most interesting part of all this is that it’s not a new idea. In the aftermath of World War I, shell-shocked soldiers lay in hospital wards, knitting their cares away as they contributed to the war effort. Of course, that may have had more to do with the fact literally everyone was knitting stuff for the soldiers in the trenches than with any attempt to treat combat-related neurosis, but whatevs, I'm taking it.