
Surprising Crochet Health Benefits
Learning how to crochet can do more than you think for your mental health and happiness

Crocheting doesn’t just help you if you’re the one who’s sick – it helps the caregivers around you, your friends and family who help you, love you and support you. It’s also a perfect craft to pick up as a hobby for group therapy sessions, as you’re healing together in a group without having the focus entirely on you. There are so many benefits of crocheting, so whether you’re stressed out and can’t sleep or are doing your part to help slow down Alzheimer’s, you’ll be doing yourself and your health a favour.
1. Crocheting reduces stress and anxiety
When you’re feeling stressed or anxious in your daily life, take some time for yourself, pick up some yarn and your hook (or your needles), and spend some time being creative. You’re taking your mind off whatever’s been nagging you by crocheting and allowing yourself to be innovative. Focusing on the repetitive motions of individual stitches and counting rows can make your mind more relaxed and free from anxious ideas and thoughts.
2. Crocheting helps with insomnia
By focusing on something easy, repetitive and soothing, like crochet projects, you can calm your mind and body enough to let you fall asleep. So the next time you’re tossing and turning in the middle of the night, don’t get frustrated; pick up a work in progress!
3. Crocheting helps ease or relieve depression
When you do something you like, your brains release dopamine, a chemical that affects your emotions and functions like a natural anti-depressant. Scientists now believe that crafts, such as crocheting, can help stimulate dopamine release to make us feel happier and better about ourselves.
4. Crocheting reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s by 30-50%.
Crocheting can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by 30-50%. Engaging in cognitive exercises and stimulating your mind can slow down or even prevent memory loss. Whether you plan on challenging your memory by learning a new stitch or technique or reading and working up a pattern, you’ll be helping preserve your memories by getting a little crafty.
5. Crochet builds your self-esteem.
We all want to feel productive and valuable, and we can do just that by working up a project to give as a gift or sell at a craft fair. Though we don’t craft just for the compliments, a little bit of external validation by someone buying your finished item or your gift recipient wearing that crochet hat you made all winter can give us the self-esteem boosts we need.
6. Crocheting acts as a form of group therapy.
Crocheting can be supremely beneficial for those seeking therapy benefits in group settings. Placing the focus on the patient and only the crochet project provides the previously mentioned health benefits of crocheting, plus a sense of community and togetherness. By working in a craft, those in a group can immediately have some way of relating to the other group members, and it may help function as an ice breaker for more serious conversations. Even if you aren’t actively seeking therapy, you can benefit from the sense of community that crocheting can bring.
7. Crocheting puts you in control.
Whether you feel helpless as a caregiver watching someone struggle or you’re the one struggling with your illness or problems, crocheting is a way to put the control back into your own hands – literally. By choosing to craft, you are in complete control of everything, from the type of project you’ll be making, the colour and type of yarn and even the kind of crochet hooks to work with, and that makes a difference in feeling like you have a say again.


One Comment
Kathryn Vercillo
So glad to see people talking about this. When I did the research for my book, Crochet Saved My Life: The Physical and Mental Health Benefits of Crochet, back in 2011-12, there were so few people having this important conversation! Now it’s increasingly well-known that crochet, and crafting in general, can be therapeutic.