The next time you book a trip to some faraway city, don’t think of it as just a vacation. Think of it as preventive medicine.
A growing body of research suggests travel is more than a luxury or an escape. It may be a legitimate tool for improving mental health, one whose effects scientists are only beginning to understand.
Researchers say travel away from our usual environments exposes the brain to novel experiences that require greater mental engagement than during our everyday routines. At home, the brain is essentially on cruise control: We passively pick out something to wear, we follow the same commute, we work alongside the same people in the same office and make relatively few new decisions. Travel forces the opposite—new food, new streets, new people, new decisions—and that friction is what builds confidence, sharpens memory and gives us a sense of satisfaction that enhances cognitive well-being.
No doctor is writing prescriptions for a week in Portugal (yet!), but the case is building. A review of recent travel studies found that the psychological benefits of a vacation, like improved mood and sleep, don’t vanish the moment you’re back at your desk. Even the anticipation of a trip leads to feeling happier about your family, your health and your finances than when you have no travel planned.
Similarly, a meta-analysis of 55 controlled clinical trials involving more than 4,400 participants over three decades found that the same ingredients that comprise a good vacation—passive, peaceful activities, like time in nature, or active pastimes, such as hiking—are good for our mental health.
What kinds of travel help the most—and why? Researchers are beginning to find answers to those questions.
Resilience sticks around
Travel improves mental health through a sort of chain reaction, according to new research from Rory Mulcahy , an associate professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Mulcahy has found that travel first produces a burst of happiness, which then goes on to build “psychological resilience”—the ability to handle stress, adapt to challenges and recover from setbacks. While that post-vacation glow typically fades once your suitcase is unpacked, the resilience sticks around.
What’s more, resilience doesn’t require an elaborate trip. Mulcahy’s research found the effect kicks in with as little as one overnight stay away from home. A related study found that people who traveled anywhere scored roughly 15% higher on a standard well-being scale when they got back from a trip compared to those who simply stayed home. And Mulcahy’s research, as well as other studies , suggest that a post-travel high can persist for up to four months.
Someone facing crisis-level stress has the most to gain from travel’s resilience-building effect, Mulcahy says, but even those depleted by moderate work pressure or family strain can benefit. “If you’ve been putting off your next holiday,” he says, “it’s worth making it a priority even if it’s just one day.”
Go far, far away
Getting away for a day is good; getting on a plane and going even farther is better. Research from Shu Cole , a professor at Indiana University’s School of Public Health, consistently shows that the farther people go, the less likely they are to report feeling depressed or isolated.
In a 2024 study drawing on a national survey of adults over 50, Cole sorted respondents into four groups based on how far they’d traveled over the previous year: People who took no leisure trips at all, people who stuck to local or regional day trips, people who traveled domestically within the U.S., and people who traveled internationally.
International travelers reported the fewest symptoms of depression and the lowest levels of loneliness, while domestic travelers came in second, day-trippers came in third and people who didn’t travel at all scored the lowest on both fronts. (To make sure people who were already sharp and upbeat weren’t the only ones to book a trip abroad, Cole followed up with the same group of people six years later, and the results held up.)
“Long-distance travel, particularly to unfamiliar destinations, often requires planning, navigation and adapting to new environments, all of which involve greater decision-making and problem-solving than traveling to familiar or nearby places,” Cole says. Striking up a conversation with a stranger on a train or navigating a foreign city with a companion can provide the mental stimulation that helps support cognitive health and build up defenses against the isolation that so often calcifies into depression in older adults, she says.
Cole doesn’t consider travel a cure-all for poor mental health, but she thinks it belongs in the same conversation as the other things doctors tell aging patients to give priority to. “Maintaining an active travel lifestyle may be a meaningful component of healthy aging,” she says.
Make it difficult
The vacation industry has spent decades selling relaxation as the product, but a comprehensive review of 125 studies suggests travelers may be dismissing something already available on every trip: difficulty.
Nanxi Yan , a lecturer in psychology at the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues found that “mastery,” or the reward of meeting a real challenge with matched skill, shows up repeatedly as a driver of lasting mental-health gains.
One of their studies tracked mountain climbers and found that being totally absorbed in a demanding task well done correlated directly with happiness. Novelty produced a similar effect: Travelers who tried activities unavailable to them at home reported more emotional balance than those who stuck to routine.
Yan’s findings suggests that, while a week by the pool can be relaxing, travelers might consider scheduling in at least one activity that demands real skill—a cooking class, a strenuous hike or learning enough of a language to navigate a food market—to tap in to a more-lasting mental-health reward.
The wonder of awe
New research suggests that awe, which researchers define as the often positive feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world, deserves its own place on the list of mental-health benefits of travel.
Paul Piff , an associate professor of psychology at the University of California at Irvine, has been running field experiments at Lake Tahoe in part with a grant from its tourism board, sending participants out to hike, kayak and simply take in the scenery. His preliminary results: After two minutes just sitting quietly in the landscape, participants reported a 70% jump in awe and a 33% increase in happiness, a pattern Piff says held across many locations and types of nature experiences.
Awe functions as “a primary driver of feelings of happiness, meaning, purpose and social connection in one’s life,” partly because it puts a person’s big problems into perspective, making them seem smaller, says Piff. “Feelings of awe connect people to the larger things they are part of, the natural world, the universe, all living things,” he says.
His results echo a previous study that tied momentary awe to reduced daily stress and, over time, higher life satisfaction. Travel, in Piff’s view, is an efficient delivery system for awe. “Cathedrals in Europe do this. Ruins in Greece do this. A meal in a night market in Thailand might do this,” he says.
Marianna Gefen for WSJ
Your authentic self
There’s often a sense of relief in being somewhere no one knows you, and researchers think that can also enhance mental health.
James Petrick , a professor in the department of hospitality, hotel management and tourism at Texas A&M University, and a veteran of the travel industry, has been studying something psychologists call “existential authenticity”—essentially, acting like the person you really are, instead of the version of yourself other people expect.
Drawing on 66 interviews with cruise passengers, his research, which he says will be published soon, found that travel makes it easier to be that authentic self than everyday life does, largely because being somewhere unfamiliar strips away the roles people play at home. Many of the passengers he interviewed said they felt freed from their usual social roles while onboard. At home, those roles come loaded with expectations (“I must behave like a dad!”) that push people to go along with what’s expected of them instead of just being themselves.
Acting on your own desires can feel selfish, but Petrick’s interviews suggest a trip that involves travel is one of the few times people let themselves off the hook, guilt included. He points to his own last trip: No work to bring along, no kids in tow, no need to act like the boss or the employee.
“I did selfish things for myself and my wife,” he says. “We shed those roles and took on a role for ourselves.”
In the end, maybe that’s why the best trips don’t just change our scenery. They change us.
