ArticleVoluntas : international journal of voluntary and nonprofit organizations2023
Exploring the Effects of Volunteering on the Social, Mental, and Physical Health and Well-being of Volunteers: An Umbrella Review.
Article in Voluntas : international journal of voluntary and nonprofit organizations, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Health benefits and harms of older adult volunteering: mixed methods systematic review.The Gerontologist · 2026Pooled it
- Effects of an 8-week multicomponent health-sports program on functional efficiency and volunteering attitudes among university students in Saudi Arabia: a randomized controlled trial.Frontiers in public health · 2026Trial
- Volunteering Predicts Mixed Outcomes on Subjective Wellbeing.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Buffering Effects of Physical Activity on Negative Life Events-Life Satisfaction Dynamics.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2026Article
- Article
- The Benefits of Prosocial Behavior for Mental and Physical Health: A Neuroscience Approach.Current directions in psychological science · 2026Article
- Retention and attrition of community health volunteers in rural Malawi; a mixed-methods study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Meaningful voluntary work design and dual pathways for healthy aging (MVP-HA): a cross-sectional and mixed-methods study in Hong Kong.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Mental health effects of caregiving for older parents in the United Kingdom: the roles of social support, neighborhood cohesion, and neighborhood deprivation.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- A disaster in the disaster: a study on post-traumatic stress symptoms among flood relief workers in Pakistan.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Assessing key mental health-related lifestyle behaviours and experiences in a single scale: a validation of the Personal Experiences in Everyday Life (PEEL) questionnaire.BMC pediatrics · 2026Article
- Self-care strategies among Arabic-speaking refugees and the Australian Mental Health Stepped Care Model: a Delphi consensus study.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Article
- Loneliness and Its Association with Depression, Aspiration Risk, and Conversation in Japanese Older Adults.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- How time exposure, role engagement and task essence ("3E") of volunteering interact to associate with healthy aging: a cross-sectional mixed-method study in Hong Kong.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- How social and political participation in later life divergently impact on perceived health of older adults: a case study in Central Italy.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Care at doorstep for psychiatric disorders by community volunteers: Readiness to volunteer for community mental health-qualitative study among nursing students.Journal of education and health promotion · 2026Article
- A Qualitative Program Evaluation Study on the Perceived Impact of Health and Nutrition Programs among Beneficiaries of a Civil Society Organization in the Philippines.Acta medica Philippina · 2026Article
- When those who benefit most participate least: socioeconomic inequalities in the well-being returns to civic engagement.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Building a sense of community in service-learning and its association with college students' prosocial behavior and social responsibility.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Volunteering provides unique benefits to organisations, recipients, and potentially the volunteers themselves. This umbrella review examined the benefits of volunteering and their potential moderators. Eleven databases were searched for systematic reviews on the social, mental, physical, or general health benefits of volunteering, published up to July 2022. AMSTAR 2 was used to assess quality and overlap of included primary studies was calculated. Twenty-eight reviews were included; participants were mainly older adults based in the USA. Although overlap between reviews was low, quality was generally poor. Benefits were found in all three domains, with reduced mortality and increased functioning exerting the largest effects. Older age, reflection, religious volunteering, and altruistic motivations increased benefits most consistently. Referral of social prescribing clients to volunteering is recommended. Limitations include the need to align results to research conducted after the COVID-19 pandemic. (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42022349703). Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11266-023-00573-z.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.