For the love of reading: Recreational reading reduces psychological distress in college students and autonomous motivation is the key

Abstract

Objective

Reading is often cited as beneficial for one’s mental health, but the research on this topic is limited. The goal of the present research was to examine whether recreational reading is beneficial for mental health during college, and to determine what motivates recreational reading.

Participants

Participants were 231 university students from a large Canadian University. Methods: A longitudinal design was employed and students completed online surveys on recreational reading, motivation, psychological distress and need frustration at the beginning and end of the academic year. Results: Recreational reading was associated with reduced psychological distress over the school year. Recreational reading seemed to buffer against the frustration of one’s basic psychological needs which led to improved mental health over the school year. Students who were more autonomously motivated reported reading more books recreationally. Conclusion: Recreational reading is a simple and cost-effective tool to help college students cope with mental health problems.

Keywords:

• Autonomous motivation
• mental health
• need frustration reading

Notes

1 These results held even when controlling for gender, year in program and the number of hours an individual spent studying and in class. Please see Appendix C on OSF for these analyses. Additionally, recreational reading during the school year was associated with reduced mental health problems, even when controlling for summer recreational reading habits. Summer recreational reading was not associated with improvements in mental health over the school year. Please see Appendix D on OSF for these supplemental analyses.

2 These analyses were also run for sleep quantity. Recreational reading is associated with improved sleep over the school year when controlling for baseline sleep quantity. Additionally, need frustration mediated the relation between recreational reading and sleep quantity. Please see Appendix E for these supplemental analyses.

3 These analyses held even when controlling for gender, year in program and the number of hours an individual spent studying and in class. Please see Appendix F on OSF for these analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé (2017-SE-196443); Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2014-20463; Joseph Armand Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholar).