Positive Massage: An Intervention for Couples' Wellbeing in a Touch-Deprived Era.

COVID-19 has brought not only fear and anxiety, but also legitimate restrictions of communication and consequential touch-deprivation in our daily lives. Couples' relational wellbeing continues to be impacted by these COVID-19 related stressors. Protecting both personal and relational wellbeing is therefore particularly important at this time.

Effects of couples positive massage programme on wellbeing, perceived stress and coping, and relation satisfaction.

Although supporting preventative self-regulation and self-care activity for daily stress is important as dyadic coping, there seems a paucity of exploration of non-verbal interventions such as tactile communication. This preliminary experimental study assessed the efficacy of a short educational massage programme for healthy but stressed couples. The study aimed to investigate if the educational mutual massage (Positive Massage) programme has any acute and sustained effects on wellbeing, perceived stress and coping, and relationship satisfaction among couples.

'To give is better than to receive?' Couples massage significantly benefits both partners' wellbeing.

This experimental study evaluated the differential effects of 'giving' and 'receiving' massage on wellbeing in healthy but stressed couples. Forty-two volunteers started the study and of these, 38 (i.e.