What are the mental health benefits of exercise?
Overcoming obstacles to exercising
Related information on Australian websites
Exercise has many benefits, not only for your physical health but also your mental health. In your brain, exercise stimulates chemicals that improve your mood and the parts of the brain responsible for memory and learning.
Exercise can also assist in mental health recovery. You can start slowly, and work on overcoming obstacles like motivation, cost and time.
What are the benefits of exercise?
Physical activity and exercise has many benefits. It can:
help you to feel better, even if you’re feeling okay
reduce the risk of illnesses like heart and lung disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease
help people recover from a stroke and many other illnesses and conditions
help you to lose weight if you want to, which is good for your health overall and might be good for your self-esteem
What are the mental health benefits of exercise?
Exercise releases chemicals like endorphins and serotonin that improve your mood. It can also get you out in the world, help to reduce any feelings of loneliness and isolation, and put you in touch with other people.
If you exercise regularly, it can reduce your stress and symptoms of mental health conditions like depression, anxiety or schizophrenia, and help with recovery from mental health issues.
It can also improve your sleep, which is important in many different ways.
Exercise and the mind
Exercise pumps blood to the brain, which can help you to think more clearly.
It increases the size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory.
It also increases the connections between the nerve cells in the brain. This improves your memory and helps protect your brain against injury and disease.
How much exercise do I need?
Australian guidelines recommend adults do at least 30 minutes of moderate to intensive physical activity on most or all days of the week. You can make up 30 minutes over the day by combining shorter 10 to 15 minute sessions.
Practising mindfulness while doing exercise also reduces your stress and improves your mental health.
If money is a worry, think about local community centres, which often have affordable exercise groups. And if you have private health insurance, you might get help for gym membership as part of a mental health treatment plan.
You may struggle finding motivation, or staying motivated for exercise. Think about ways you can make exercise part of your daily routine and lifestyle. Choose something you enjoy, and ask your friends or family to help motivate you and to keep you on track.
If you own a dog, take them for walks in your local area.
Combine your exercise routine with a healthy diet to boost your motivation and energy for exercise.
How do I start exercising?
You don’t need to visit a gym to exercise. Consider ways you can incorporate exercise into your daily routine and lifestyle. Pick something you enjoy, and use your friends or family as motivators to keep you on track.
Enjoy the benefits of owning a pet — if you own a dog, make the most of your local area for their walks. You could walk in a park or by a beach if they are nearby.
If you enjoy dancing, try a creative dance movement class.
If you can’t move around easily, swimming might work for you.
Seated exercise is an option for people with a disability.
For walking, a pedometer helps you set goals by monitoring your steps, aiming for 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. Exercise is also a good time to try mindfulness self-awareness training.
Jean Hailes for Women’s Health has a list of activities for men and women to give you some ideas on where to start.
Overcoming obstacles to exercising
Motivation: You may struggle with motivation for exercise. Start slow, set small goals, and use a mood monitor to keep track of any change in your mood.
Cost: Local community centres often have affordable exercise groups. And if you have private health insurance. you might get financial assistance for gym membership.
Anxiety or feeling intimidated: You might feel uncomfortable joining a group exercise class. This is perfectly normal. Take a friend with you for the first time, or download an app to exercise in your own home.
Time: If you are short on time, break exercise into small chunks. Instead of doing 30 minutes in one go, do three lots of 10 minutes in a day.
Physical: if physical obstacles such as injuries are making it difficult to exercise, you may benefit from seeing a health professional such as a physiotherapist to help you recover.
Resources and support
Jean Hailes for Women’s Health has a weekly activity diary and provides tips on how to implement an exercise program.
The Black Dog Institute has information on depression and benefits of exercise.
SANE Australia has information on ways to look after your physical health, including physical activity.
SA Health has information on the beneficial effects of walking on mood.
Contact Head to Health for advice, assessment and referral into local mental health services — call 1800 595 212 from 8:30am to 5pm on weekdays (public holidays excluded)
If you need more information and support, visit Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia (MIFA) for resources, helplines, apps, online programs and forums.
Sir: In this era of exponential growth of the “metabolic syndrome” and obesity, lifestyle modifications could be a cost-effective way to improve health and quality of life. Lifestyle modifications can assume especially great importance in individuals with serious mental illness. Many of these individuals are at a high risk of chronic diseases associated with sedentary behavior and medication side effects, including diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and cardiovascular disease.1 An essential component of lifestyle modification is exercise. The importance of exercise is not adequately understood or appreciated by patients and mental health professionals alike. Evidence has suggested that exercise may be an often-neglected intervention in mental health care.2
Aerobic exercises, including jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening, and dancing, have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression.3 These improvements in mood are proposed to be caused by exercise-induced increase in blood circulation to the brain and by an influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and, thus, on the physiologic reactivity to stress.3 This physiologic influence is probably mediated by the communication of the HPA axis with several regions of the brain, including the limbic system, which controls motivation and mood; the amygdala, which generates fear in response to stress; and the hippocampus, which plays an important part in memory formation as well as in mood and motivation.
Other hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the beneficial effects of physical activity on mental health include distraction, self-efficacy, and social interaction.4 While structured group programs can be effective for individuals with serious mental illness, lifestyle changes that focus on the accumulation and increase of moderate-intensity activity throughout the day may be the most appropriate for most patients.1 Interestingly, adherence to physical activity interventions in psychiatric patients appears to be comparable to that in the general population.
Exercise improves mental health by reducing anxiety, depression, and negative mood and by improving self-esteem and cognitive function.2 Exercise has also been found to alleviate symptoms such as low self-esteem and social withdrawal.3 Exercise is especially important in patients with schizophrenia since these patients are already vulnerable to obesity and also because of the additional risk of weight gain associated with antipsychotic treatment, especially with the atypical antipsychotics. Patients suffering from schizophrenia who participated in a 3-month physical conditioning program showed improvements in weight control and reported increased fitness levels, exercise tolerance, reduced blood pressure levels, increased perceived energy levels, and increased upper body and hand grip strength levels.5 Thirty minutes of exercise of moderate intensity, such as brisk walking for 3 days a week, is sufficient for these health benefits. Moreover, these 30 minutes need not to be continuous; three 10-minute walks are believed to be as equally useful as one 30-minute walk.
Health benefits from regular exercise that should be emphasized and reinforced by every mental health professional to their patients include the following:
Improved sleep
Increased interest in sex
Better endurance
Stress relief
Improvement in mood
Increased energy and stamina
Reduced tiredness that can increase mental alertness
Weight reduction
Reduced cholesterol and improved cardiovascular fitness
Mental health service providers can thus provide effective, evidence-based physical activity interventions for individuals suffering from serious mental illness. Further studies should be done to understand the impact of combining such interventions with traditional mental health
