Protective effects of physical activity on mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has been linked with increased reports of depression, anxiety, and stress. Stay-at-home directives during the pandemic-imposed lifestyle changes, including eating and sedentary behaviors that can further undermine mental health outcomes. Physical activity is a vital component for metabolic health, as well as for mental health by serving as an active coping strategy to manage stress and promote resilience. Global reports of increased sedentary leisure behaviors have been associated with feelings of depression and anxiety, but it unclear whether the relationship between physical activity and depression or anxiety persists over time. In this longitudinal study, we investigated (i) whether physical activity at the onset of the pandemic was related to feelings of depression or anxiety over time and (ii) whether this relationship was mediated by stress appraisals during the pandemic. We surveyed 319 adults living in Canada or the United States to assess physical activity, stress appraisals, and mental health outcomes at two time points over a 6-month period. We found a reduction in leisure-time physical activity that was linked to subsequent feelings of depression. Furthermore, individuals with lower levels of physical activity were more likely to appraise their COVID-19 situation to be uncontrollable at pandemic onset and as the pandemic continued. Stress appraisals of threat and uncontrollability were also positively related to feelings of depression. Modelling these three factors together showed that appraising a situation as uncontrollable mediated the relationship between initial physical activity and subsequent depressive feelings. Although correlational, these data highlight the protective role of leisure-time physical activity against worsened mental health outcomes during periods of prolonged stress.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".