MENTAL HEALTH IS OTHER PEOPLE

Enjoying the weather? Did you see the game? Small talk and simple face-to-face interactions have a bigger effect on our wellbeing than you might think. So, do you fancy a cuppa?

- KELLY OAKES

Dr Gillian Sandstrom was at the opera when she realised how good she had become at talking to strangers. A woman with Parkinson's was feeling anxious and needed an aisle seat and when Sandstrom noticed what was happening, she asked a whole row of people to move along to make room for the woman and her husband.

"As the couple moved past me, the husband said, Thank you so much, I could never have done that,' and I thought to myself, 'pastGillian couldn't have done that either'," she says. "But now, it's not a big deal."

For Sandstrom, a senior lecturer in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex, talking to strangers didn't always come naturally. But her research looks at the benefits of those small, day-to-day interactions and so, over the course of her career, she has had plenty of practice. Now, it's a skill she's glad she cultivated. "I would feel like a hypocrite if I didn't talk to strangers, so I do it a lot," she says. "The biggest benefit is I'm just not nervous about other people anymore."

● Body and mind

We all know that a balanced diet and exercise are important parts of staying healthy. But a growing body of research is showing that there's another factor that's even more important for keeping us in good shape, both physically and mentally: our social connections.

A landmark study published in 2010 found that the quality of someone's relationships is a bigger predictor of early death than obesity and physical inactivity, and on a par with smoking and alcohol consumption. "The size of these effects really can't be overstated; they're enormous," says Tegan Cruwys, an associate professor and clinical psychologist at the Australian National University.