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Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
21–30 of 78 posts
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#22For those of you with better understanding, did they establish causality? Does exercise fend of mental disorders, or do people with mental disorders find it harder to exercise consistently? The first could be a novel finding, but the latter seems obvious. Forcing yourself to exercise routinely requires discipline, and many mental disorders carry along with them executive dysfunction that make discipline harder to com…
Experientally, my brother with ADHD and severe depression, has told me many times, that he notices a huge difference in the severity of his depression based on how much he exercises.
I certainly notice a relationship between the two in myself, but I couldn't tell you which one is in control.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#23Not doubting the importance of physical activity, but poor mental health makes it significantly harder to maintain fitness as a child. Often, school sports have minimum GPA requirements. A poor home life increases chances of mental illness and decreases chances that someone will drive you to practice. Will you even maintain the team sport if your teammates never accept you, given whatever mental condition that gives…
>but I doubt they went through all the effort to have deep, revealing conversations about the home life or other nuanced cofounders of each participant.
Why is it that nearly every paper linked on HN, someone is in the comments saying the research didn't go far enough? In this case without even reading the paper?
Nothing in your critique is relevant to the fact that the authors found physical fitness and mental health linked. No, not everyone has equal access to sports. Yes mental health is complicated.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#24Not doubting the importance of physical activity, but poor mental health makes it significantly harder to maintain fitness as a child. Often, school sports have minimum GPA requirements. A poor home life increases chances of mental illness and decreases chances that someone will drive you to practice. Will you even maintain the team sport if your teammates never accept you, given whatever mental condition that gives…
Instead of looking for excuses, find a way. You don't have to play tennis, climbing a tree will do.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#25Not doubting the importance of physical activity, but poor mental health makes it significantly harder to maintain fitness as a child. Often, school sports have minimum GPA requirements. A poor home life increases chances of mental illness and decreases chances that someone will drive you to practice. Will you even maintain the team sport if your teammates never accept you, given whatever mental condition that gives…
Instead of looking for excuses, find a way. You don't have to play tennis, climbing a tree will do.
Or even just buying a few fun and dirt cheap physical toys - hula hoop, jump rope, etc. Staying in minimally decent physical shape is super easy and cheap - even more so for a child.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#26less anxious / depressed kids get to do more sports in the first place. kids without "the right attitude" or a lack of innate ability are routinely excluded from sports, as im sure many of us here have experienced.
You don't have to do sports to do physical activity.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#27Not doubting the importance of physical activity, but poor mental health makes it significantly harder to maintain fitness as a child. Often, school sports have minimum GPA requirements. A poor home life increases chances of mental illness and decreases chances that someone will drive you to practice. Will you even maintain the team sport if your teammates never accept you, given whatever mental condition that gives…
> A poor home life increases chances of mental illness and decreases chances that someone will drive you to practice.
That you need to be driven at all to exercise is a huge part of the reason why exercise and fitness rates are so low in our youth. Our grandparents and great grandparents walked miles to go to school five days a week, and we've built our cities such that this is impossible or dangerous. We now live in towns that sprawl endlessly, and most of us forbid our kids to go outside unsupervised, so kids never find each other and play amongst themselves.
And for what? What exactly are we gaining by building our cities and our towns like this? It makes us all unhealthier because we are forced to drive everywhere. It isolates us and our children, who are now lonely on top of being merely physically inactive. We are poorer because we spend so much money on car loans, car insurance, gas, and parking. We are just as likely to die a violent death in the suburbs due to the increase risk of car crashes. We are isolated, poor, unhealthy, and unhappy, and in exchange we get... what exactly?
> The paper isn’t public so “controlling for confounders” is all you get, but I doubt they went through all the effort to have deep, revealing conversations about the home life or other nuanced cofounders of each participant.
The study was conducted in Taiwan which does not suffer from US-style car extremism. "Children cannot go out to play because their parents cannot afford to drive them" is a statement they would consider unthinkably psychotic. Can they not use public transit, or at worst, walk to where all the other neighborhood children are playing unorganized?
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#28The role of brain health in mental illness is commonly discounted, but so consistently found in studies. I got roasted here for recommending psychiatrist Mary Edes' book on improving mental health with dietary changes, but the benefits of the approach are clear. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/27/1227062... I've resolved most of my diabetes type 2 with diet, and nobody should be surprised that this…
The individual parts of diabetes, blood glucose, nutrition, cell energy systems are really well documented.
But yet putting those facts together leads significant resistance.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#29less anxious / depressed kids get to do more sports in the first place. kids without "the right attitude" or a lack of innate ability are routinely excluded from sports, as im sure many of us here have experienced.
kids without "the right attitude" or a lack of innate ability are routinely excluded from sports, as im sure many of us here have experienced. You're projecting. Most coaches just want kids to work hard and have fun. They really couldn't care less about winning. If you need absolute proof, there are many sports such as swimming and track where every additional kid adds points to your team total such that having more…
No, I don't think they're projecting, I think you've been highly fortunate.
Track is not a good example, at least in my case. Our coaches spent ZERO time with those of us who weren't obviously going to be breaking any records, and whenever we lost a match, made us do so much extra work it was almost impossible to climb stairs the next day. I couldn't get any support from any of them, which I still consider highly unfair, since if I had support maybe I could have figured out a method to improve, but on my own... I just quit.
From my experience in multiple sports, most coaches just want to win. Finding one who cares more about the kids than the score is an absolute blessing, they're so rare.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#30less anxious / depressed kids get to do more sports in the first place. kids without "the right attitude" or a lack of innate ability are routinely excluded from sports, as im sure many of us here have experienced.
I was routinely picked last if not at all in sports all throughout my childhood. As a result, I picked up sports I could do on my own, such as lifting weights, biking, swimming, and running. Individual sports such as golf and tennis followed naturally. I would have otherwise been a complete shut-in. Although I do have a lack of executive function, I make sure to get exercise as often as I can. Classes at the local gy…
> I was routinely picked last if not at all in sports all throughout my childhood. As a result, I picked up sports I could do on my own
I suspect many kids are so disheartened by these early experiences that they are much less likely to make the transition as you did. Personally, it took many years of adulthood before I figured out that physical activity was actually super beneficial and not just the games that bullies play. By high school, I refused to participate in PE and just took Fs.
Maybe schools should start kids out with individual activities instead of team sports?