Exploring the Effects of Volunteering on the Social, Mental, and Physical Health and Well-being of Volunteers: An Umbrella Review

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.

Keywords: Health; Social prescribing; Umbrella review; Volunteering; Wellbeing.

Fig. 1

Outcomes identified and analysed within the current umbrella review, grouped by coding of outcome

Fig. 2

PRISMA flow diagram of retrieved articles (Page et al., 2020)

Fig. 3

Summary of strength of evidence for each variable outlined in Fig. 1. Labelled according to vote counting results; ‘very strong’, ‘strong’, ‘moderate’, ‘weak’, and ‘very weak’