While exercise is widely recognized for its physical health benefits, new research sheds light on how it also influences mental health, not merely through the activity itself but significantly depending on context, environment and purpose.
“Historically, physical activity research has focused on how long someone exercises for or how many calories were burned,” co-author Patrick O’Connor, a professor in the Mary Frances Early College of Education’s Department of Kinesiology at the University of Georgia, said in a news release. “The ‘dose’ of exercise has been the dominant way researchers have tried to understand how physical activity might influence mental health, while often ignoring whether those minutes were spent exercising with a friend or as part of a game.”
The study, published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, introduces fresh insights into the nuances of exercise and mental health.
The researchers analyzed three distinct types of studies: large-scale epidemiological studies scrutinizing health patterns in populations, randomized controlled trials contrasting exercise groups with non-exercise groups, and emerging investigations into contextual factors.
Multiple studies found that individuals who engage in regular leisure-time physical activity, such as running, yoga or biking for pleasure, report lower levels of depression and anxiety. However, the mental health benefits were often less clear for other physical activities like household chores or outdoor labor jobs.
The environment, companionship and circumstances around these activities appear to play a pivotal role.
“For example, if a soccer player runs down the field and kicks the game-winning ball, their mental health is fantastic,” O’Connor added. “In contrast, if you do the exact same exercise but miss the goal and people are blaming you, you likely feel very differently. Anecdotes such as these show how context matters even when people are performing a similar exercise dose.”
Although numerous randomized trials indicate that regular exercise boosts mental health, particularly for those with pre-existing mental health issues, these studies often involve small, short-term and homogenous samples, limiting the generalizability of the findings.
“The average effects on mental health are small across all the randomized controlled studies of exercise, and that’s partly because most of the studies focused on people who were not depressed or anxious — you do get bigger effects in those studies,” added O’Connor. “We’re communicating to scientists that larger- and longer-term controlled studies are needed to make a compelling case whether exercise does, or does not, truly impact mental health.”
The most novel and potentially impactful aspect of the study is its examination of contextual factors. These factors, ranging from peer dynamics and instructor style to external conditions like weather and timing, can drastically alter the effectiveness of physical activity on mental health.
“If you’re outside and it’s hot, and you’re having to walk to work, that’s part of the context,” O’Connor explained. “Or if you go and take a group exercise class — some instructors you really like, and some you don’t. So, that’s also part of the context.”
Ultimately, this research suggests that for exercise to genuinely benefit mental health, more attention must be paid to the meaning, setting and experience of the activity.
“If we’re trying to help people’s mental health with exercise, then not only do we need to think about the dose and the mode, we also need to ask: What is the context?” O’Connor added.
This study was co-authored by Eduardo Bustamante of the University of Illinois Chicago, Angelique Brellenthin of Iowa State University, and David Brown, recently retired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Source: University of Georgia