Scientists from Iowa State University found that people who spent more time sitting during the COVID-19 pandemic were likely to have higher depression symptoms.
The research is published in the Frontiers in Psychiatry and was conducted by Jacob Meyer et al.
As people adhered to stay-at-home orders or self-isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic daily commutes turned into shuffles between the bedroom and the living room.
Clicking Zoom links erased time spent walking to meeting rooms, and Netflix spilled into time otherwise dedicated to the gym. In short, a lot of people suddenly became more sedentary during the onset of the pandemic.
In the study, the team looked at how physical activity and sedentary behaviors are related to mental health, and how changes those influence the way people think, feel and perceive the world.
They received survey responses from more than 3,000 study participants from all 50 states and the District of Colombia.
Participants self-reported how much time they spent doing activities, like sitting, looking at screens, and exercising, and how those behaviors compared to pre-pandemic times.
Using standard clinical scales, they also indicated changes to their mental wellbeing (e.g., depression, anxiety, feeling stressed, lonely).
The team found that people who were meeting the US Physical Activity Guidelines (i.e., 2.5-5 hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity each week) before the pandemic decreased their physical activity by 32%, on average, shortly after COVID-19-related restrictions went into effect.
The same participants reported feeling more depressed, anxious, and lonely.
For people whose sitting times stayed high, their depressive symptoms, on average, didn’t recover in the same way as everyone else’s.
The participants who continued to spend a large portion of their day sitting experienced blunted mental health improvements.
The team says that finding an “association” between sitting and mental health is not the same as saying more sitting causes depression.
It’s possible people who were more depressed sat more or that people who sat more became more depressed. Or there could have been some other factor that the researchers did not identify.
They hope more people will recognize that even a little bit of movement can improve their mood and mental health, and try to find ways to build it into their day.
If you care about depression, please read studies about common antibiotic that may reduce depression, and this nutrient in your diet may help fight depression
For more information about mental health, please see recent studies about depression drug that may protect you from severe COVID-19, and results showing PTSD, anxiety, and depression may not be mental diseases.
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