Abstract

Mental health has been a big concern for many, though the resources have been growing in that subject. Much success has been reached in further pushing better mental health such as therapy to help perspective as well as journaling, but exercise too has a strong correlation in mental health. This paper aims to speak on the correlation between exercise and mental health to answer, how does exercise affect mental health? By reviewing and analyzing a series of studies closely related to the subject matter.  

Introduction  

  There’s a misconception that mental health problems are just mental conflicts resulting from the person’s perspective in life and willpower. Mental health problems can be affected by many interior factors such as past trauma and internalized issues, but they can just as much be affected by external factors like environment or lack of physical activity. Lack of exercise or physical activity has a connection to mental health problems but just as these correlate, actually partaking in exercising in your daily life can actually help out people mental with health problems. 

       Literature Review

  Exercise and its correlation to Mental health problems

Exercise has always been known to help with the physical aspects of one’s health such as weight  Heart disease, dementia, back pain, arthritis, and other diseases with a more obvious effect on the body’s health. In contrast exercise’s correlation to mental health has not been as well known as these, especially the quality of the exercises. The quality of an exercise can be defined by three factors: intensity, duration, and frequency,  which are the three categories used to study the correlation between exercise and mental health in (Grasdalsmoen, M., Eriksen, H. R., Lønning, K. J., & Sivertsen, B. (2020)) and (Chekroud SR Et al., 2018). More specifically  (Grasdalsmoen, et al., 2020) uses the three to measure the association between mental health and exercise in 1.2 million people in the United States between 2011 through 2015, in contrast (Chekroud SR Et al., 2018) uses the three to study if suicide attempts and self-harm among college/university students are linked to low levels of physical activity.  The study of self-harm and suicide attempts being in relation to exercise was conducted by having 50,054 students from Norway participate in answering several surveys such as three questions to measure frequency, intensity, and duration of the exercises,  (Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25; HSCL-25) to measure psychological distress (measures mental health problems), and self-harm/suicide attempts were measured with two items from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey. The main findings of this study was that “Physical exercise was negatively associated with all measures of mental health problems and suicidality in a dose-response manner.” (Chekroud SR Et al., 2018) meaning that in a dose-response manner physical exercise was not detrimental or at fault to mental health problems and suicidality. The study enforces that there needs to be a push for college students to be more physically active due to the association between the dose-response of exercises and mental health problems. 

 

  (Grasdalsmoen, M., Eriksen, H. R., Lønning, K. J., & Sivertsen, B. (2020)) approaches their aim to find if exercise is associated with mental health by doing a cross sectional study to compare numbers of days of bad mental health that was self reported between those who exercised and others who did not partake in exercising, the two groups were then divided in terms of age, race, gender, marital status, income, education level, body-mass index category, self-reported physical health, and previous diagnosis of depression. The findings of this study was that those who did exercise had a 43 percent lower amount of days of mental health problems in comparison to those who did not exercise. Another finding was that all types of exercises were associated with lower levels of mental health problems.

 

   Exercise’s effect on Patients with Schizophrenia:

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder whose symptoms are delusion, hallucinations, sporadic or unorganized behavior and speech. Patients with this disorder are mostly deemed unable to take care of themselves due to their impaired ability to function cognitively. (Scheewe TW., Et al 2013)highlight that two common patterns of patients with schizophrenia are that depression is ubiquitous among these patients and that “70-75% of patients with schizophrenia can be classified as being physically inactive and do not meet minimal physical activity recommendations” (Scheewe TW., Et al 2013). This is important information for the study because as stated in the study low levels of physical activity is associated with higher levels of negative symptoms. Furthermore lower levels of functional exercise capacity has been associated with more severe depressive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Researchers of this study thoroughly wrote out the method of the study which is where it was shown that sixty-three patients all with schizophrenia were randomly assigned six weeks of organized exercise or occupational therapy, 31 of them being assigned in organized exercise and 32 of the patients in occupational therapy. After the study had come to an end, the researchers were able to conclude that exercise therapy happened to be the better option for helping patients with schizophrenia, and with mild to average depression. Another main finding of the study was that  “Exercise therapy, when performed once to twice a week, improved mental health and cardiovascular fitness and reduced need of care in patients with schizophrenia” (Scheewe TW., Et al 2013), as well as that exercise therapy compared to occupational therapy, improves the cardiovascular fitness in patients with schizophrenia. Limitations were also included in the study which was that metabolic syndrome did not improve immensely because of the limited amount of exercise duration, frequency and intensity. Another limitation of the study was that many patients dropped out or did not comply, which led to per-protocol analysis being performed on only 39 subjects.  

 

    Conclusion 

Few gaps in the studies I have found was that many contained the use of surveys or self report surveys to gather data for the studies. This can be detrimental to the study because it is easy to be subjective when answering questions on yourself, meaning many people could have lied for example when answering questions on the many surveys given to college/university students to find the correlation between exercise and suicidality and self-harm among college/university students and also in the study of exercise’s effect on patients with schizophrenia in order to find if the patients were also depressed, in which many were depressed. The strengths of the studies were that they varied in sample sizes and subjects. The variety in all studies helped find a more accurate conclusion for each even if one study I chose did not have many. The reason being is that all studies concluded very similar answers which was that exercise is actually very helpful when it comes to mental health. One question I had hoped to find the answer to when looking at all these studies was data on mental health problems in low-income environments. This was an interesting gap in all the studies I have found with the exception of  (Chekroud SR Et al., 2018)’s study which also included the financial status of the patients for a meta-analysis. 

 

                 

 

 

Annotated Bibliography

Scheewe, T. W., Backx, F. J., Takken, T., Jörg, F., Van Strater, A. C., Kroes, A. G., . . . Cahn, W. (2012). Exercise therapy improves mental and physical health in schizophrenia: A randomised controlled trial. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 127(6), 464-473. doi:10.1111/acps.12029

The author of this study investigated the question of what is more beneficial for patients with schizophrenia. The main focus of this study was comparing two forms of therapy, exercise and occupational therapy in order to study their effects on mental and physical health on patients with schizophrenia. Symptoms of Schizophrenia were measured by using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, cardiovascular fitness level were measured with a cardiopulmonary exercise test, and Depression symptoms were measured with A ̊ sberg Depression Rating Scale as well as Camberwell Assessment of Needs. Other methods of measurement involved using body fat percentage, and metabolic syndrome. The sample size was a randomized group of sixty-three patients  all with Schizophrenia, Schizophreniform or schizoaf- fective. The conclusion of this study was that exercise therapy, when done ones to twice a week improved mental health and decreased “need of care in patients with schizophrenia”  

 

Grasdalsmoen, M., Eriksen, H. R., Lønning, K. J., & Sivertsen, B. (2020). Physical exercise, mental health problems, and suicide attempts in university students. BMC Psychiatry, 20. https://doi-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/10.1186/s12888-020-02583-3

 

The study’s goal is to investigate the link between physical exercise and mental health problems, more specifically the frequency, time, and intensity of the physical exercise and mental health problems. The study used data from the previous study SHoT2018-study, which was a national health survey for higher education in Norway with a sample size of 50,054 students between the ages of 18-35. Two things were measured; Physical exercise which was assessed with three questions on the person’s frequency,duration and intensity. Mental health was assessed with a screening tool that measured psychological distress (Self report survey) and self reported depressive disorder using a predefined list of conditions. The conclusion of this study was that “Physical exercise was negatively associated with all measures of mental health problems and suicidality in a dose-response manner.” Meaning exercise was not at all associated with mental health problems and suicidality. College students should partake in exercising for menta; health care and lower levels of suicidality. 

 

Schuch, F. B., Vancampfort, D., Firth, J., Rosenbaum, S., Ward, P. B., Silva, E. S., . . . Stubbs, B. (2018). Physical activity and incident depression: A meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. American Journal of Psychiatry, 175(7), 631-648. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.17111194

This article is a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. The main goal of this meta-analysis was to find the correlation between physical activity and incident depression. The meta-analysis used “Demographic and clinical data, data on physical activity and depression assessments, and odds ratios, relative risks, and hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals.” to cross analyze and find correlations. The study’s conclusion was that the data positively supported that physical activity can ensure protection against an uprising of depression in anyone regardless of age and geographic age. Limitations were included in this study including recall-bias from self-report studies. 

 

Chekroud SR;Gueorguieva R;Zheutlin AB;Paulus M;Krumholz HM;Krystal JH;Chekroud AM;. (2018, August 08). Association between physical exercise and mental health in 1·2 million individuals in the USA between 2011 and 2015: A cross-sectional study. Retrieved May 04, 2021, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30099000/

 

Herring, M. P. (2010). The effect of exercise training on anxiety symptoms among patients. Archives of Internal Medicine,170(4), 321. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2009.530