Reading for pleasure as an investment in health.

At a time when screens increasingly capture the attention of people, scientists from the University of Cambridge remind us of an old and very simple habit. In a review published on 15 September 2026 in a respected psychiatric journal, they conclude that reading for pleasure is linked to better mental health, greater empathy and a lower risk of dementia. The paper is authored by Professor Barbara Sahakian and Christelle Langley of the Department of Psychiatry. Vicki Perrin, the chief executive of the charity of Queen Camilla that promotes reading, worked with them.

The data on children and adolescents are particularly convincing. In one study of more than 10,000 young people, those who started reading for pleasure early later showed better attention, better memory and stronger executive functions, such as planning and self-control. They also had better results at school, fewer psychological difficulties and a healthier lifestyle, with more sleep and less time in front of screens. Precisely for this reason the finding that reading for pleasure among children and young people is at its lowest recorded level is worrying. The decline is most pronounced among boys and among children from families on lower incomes.

In adults reading acts above all as an antidote to stress. According to a study from 2024, commissioned by the same organisation, as little as five minutes of reading fiction can reduce stress by up to 20 per cent. Surveys cited in the review show that more adults reach for a book than for a glass of wine when they need comfort. Reading fiction also develops empathy, because the reader enters into the thoughts and feelings of the characters.

For older people the review offers equally important findings. In a study of more than 5,500 people aged over 55, those who regularly read developed cognitive impairment significantly less often over five years. Moreover, reading newspapers, magazines and books is associated with a 33 per cent lower risk of Alzheimer's disease. In addition, scans of the brain show that in readers the areas responsible for language, learning and the control of emotions have a larger volume.

However, these results should be interpreted with caution. Most studies show an association, not necessarily cause and effect. It is possible that people who read more also have a better education, more free time or healthier habits, which also protect them from disease. On the other hand, the review gathers evidence from different ages and methods, from long-term follow-up studies to scans of the brain, which point in the same direction.

The conclusions appear in the year that England has declared a National Year of Reading. The campaign, which is run by the Department for Education and a national organisation for literacy, wants to present reading once again as fun, not as a duty. According to Langley, children engage more with reading when they get content that genuinely entertains them, including comics and graphic novels. The authors also highlight reading groups, which offer social contact too on top of the benefit of reading itself, and thereby reduce the risk of loneliness.