Treating Mental Health with Physical Activity

Dr. Ben Singh

You may have seen headlines the last few weeks saying things like "Exercise is More Effective than Medication for Mental Health" and "It’s Not Just Exercise that Improves your Mental Health – Intensity and Type Matters Too." The research that is driving all these headlines comes from Dr. Ben Singh's team at the University of South Australia, and he's our guest on this week's episode.

The study that has caught everyone's attention has been described as “the most comprehensive synthesis to date of evidence regarding the effects of all modes of physical activity on symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress in adult populations.” Their team pulled together systematic reviews spanning numerous exercise modalities, mental health disorders, and patient populations to synthesize a comprehensive overview of the current literature.

The article has done the research equivalent of "breaking the internet." As of this episode posting, it has an Altmeric Attention Score of 2957 (and rising), it has been picked up by 195 news outlets, and it has already been cited in three academic articles despite only being published a couple of months ago. For context, any score over 20 is considered quite good, and Dr. Singh's previous high was 60. This article is already in the top 1% of all research ever tracked by Altmetric.

In the episode, we discuss how different types of physical activity may be more or less beneficial for different conditions, the importance of including exercise professionals in the treatment of mental health disorders, and the many obstacles to normalizing exercise as a treatment modality. For an example of the insights Dr. Singh's team found, resistance training appears to be most effective for depression, whereas pilates and yoga were more effective for anxiety. Both outperformed aerobic exercise despite previous guidelines that prioritized it. But tune in to the conversation before you draw your conclusions, because Dr. Singh discusses the limitations of the existing research, and how much work there is left to do.

You can find the original article ⁠HERE⁠.

You can find Dr. Singh on ⁠Twitter⁠.