An international research team led by the University of Konstanz and Oxford Brookes University concludes that gentle touch is not only good for mental health, but also for the evolution of cooperation.

Past studies have identified a loneliness-rumination-depression nexus. Rumination is defined as repetitive and intrusive negative thoughts and feelings, and loneliness as a gap between desired and actual social connections.

Given a widely reported high co-occurrence between loneliness and depression, a research team led by the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Professor Tatia M.C. Lee, Chair Professor of Psychological Science and Clinical Psychology and May Professor in Neuropsychology at HKU, sought to understand the underlying mechanisms.

The research team’s hypothesis for their study, entitled “A network analysis of rumination on loneliness and the relationship with depression”, which was recently published in Nature Mental Health, aimed to examine the connections that rumination would mediate the relationship between loneliness and depression, where a higher level of loneliness would be associated with more rumination, which would, in turn, link to a higher severity of depressive symptoms.