Jigsaw Puzzles for Caregiver Stress Relief

When life becomes puzzling, have a seat and escape from it all with the Caregiverlist Holiday Puzzle featuring our Caregiver Stress Relief Photos-of-the-Week where with a little focus, faith and friendship (how'd you see that?) every piece always falls into place. Guaranteed! "Puzzling" provides an enjoyable activity for caregivers and the person who receives care while delivering the added benefit of a psychological time-out from stressors.

A University of Michigan study found adults could boost their I.Q. by +4 points after spending 25 minutes a day doing puzzles. Why? Our brains go from a "beta" or wakeful state to an "alpha" state (the state we are in when dreaming) when solving puzzles. Researchers at Australia's Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, determined puzzles, card games, chess, and adult education classes can reduce the risk of developing dementia over the age of 70 by as much as 11%. Engaging in jigsaw puzzles delivers emotion-focused coping and provides a "breather" from stress. This is because of the focused attentional demands on our brain while doing a puzzle that enables a psychological time-out from stressors. Jigsaw puzzling can serve as a mood enhancement by changing our brains to a state of flow. Puzzles also deliver the feeling of achievement as you find the missing piece and fun as you surprise yourself and others with your capabilities. The puzzle photos also take you away to spark happy memories or spark imagination.

Jigsaw puzzling may demand multiple cognitive abilities including:

Visual Perception: recognizing objects, patterns and orientation of lines
Constructional Praxis: integrating visual and motor information to assemble pieces
Mental Rotation; mentally rotating piece's orientation to fit them to other pieces
Cognitive Speed and Visual Scanning (sorting puzzle pieces)
Cognitive Flexibility: switching attention between different strategies, between different puzzle pieces and between puzzle shape, image and color
Perceptual Reasoning: integrating different perceptual information to develop strategies and plans how to solve the puzzle
Working and Episodic Memory: keeping the association between spatial location and visual patterns and images of puzzle pieces in working memory and long-term memory

In addition, engaging in jigsaw puzzling seems to regulate distressing emotions because of the focused attentional demands.We know jigsaw puzzling as a leisure activity delivers benefits and more studies will need to be conducted, beyond the recently released results of the Australian study, to determine the potential effects on cognition puzzling can deliver.

The cognitive demanding activity and emotion-focused coping strategy of puzzling helps with daily living and more research can showcase the long-term potential of daily puzzling to maintain our minds. In the meantime, we know puzzling delivers positive benefits.

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