Association between physical exercise and mental health: a cross-sectional study

This is sure to quickly fill with personal anecdotes, I can attest to experiencing this phenomena myself, but I wonder what we can do with this information? I think it's already in the "everybody knows" category, so how do we get those who need it the most to take advantage of it? The extreme presentation of these conditions typically impedes one from becoming physically active, thought I do look forward to the success that I'm sure will be the first soccer league for agoraphobics.

This was a cross-sectional study. Here's an opposing result for anxiety and depression:

> Testing Causality in the Association Between Regular Exercise and Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression

> Context: In the population at large, regular exercise is associated with reduced anxious and depressive symptoms. Results of experimental studies in clinical populations suggest a causal effect of exercise on anxiety and depression, but it is unclear whether such a causal effect also drives the population association. We cannot exclude the major contribution of a third underlying factor influencing exercise behavior and symptoms of anxiety and depression...

> Setting: Causal effects of exercise were tested by bivariate genetic modeling of the association between exercise and symptoms of anxiety and depression, correlation of intrapair differences in these traits among genetically identical twins, and longitudinal modeling of changes in exercise behavior and anxious and depressive symptoms.

> Results: Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations were small and were best explained by common genetic factors with opposite effects on exercise behavior and symptoms of anxiety and depression. In genetically identical twin pairs, the twin who exercised more did not display fewer anxious and depressive symptoms than the co-twin who exercised less. Longitudinal analyses showed that increases in exercise participation did not predict decreases in anxious and depressive symptoms.

> Conclusion: Regular exercise is associated with reduced anxious and depressive symptoms in the population at large, but the association is not because of causal effects of exercise.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

There's a huge bias in popular reporting toward studies concluding that interventions are helpful.

Few academics stake their careers on papers saying that X does fuck all (unless everyone already things X is amazingly effective)

> I think it's already in the "everybody knows" category

I’m sure most people have a pretty good idea exercise can help with mental health. I think the next thing that needs to happen is a broader awareness of just how effective exercise can be, and that it should be one of the very first thing tried to improve mental health. I think this should happen along with a general increase in mental health awareness (you can’t use exercise to help with your depression if you don’t recognize you’re depressed).

In practice, it probably just adds a bit more motivation or reinforcement to the existing body of knowledge. There is a lot of conflicting info out there about how much is needed, what kind, etc., so the fact that this is saying a broad range of activities and so on were shown helpful is a plus. Helps take the "should I run or bike or weight lift or... screw it, I'm sitting on the couch" out of it.