Summary: People who reported more sedentary behavior as a result of the COVID lockdowns were more likely to develop symptoms of depression and anxiety than those who maintained a more active lifestyle.
Source: Iowa State University
As people adhered to stay-at-home orders or self-isolated during the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, 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. Recently published research found people who continued to spend a higher amount of time sitting between April and June 2020 were likely to have higher symptoms of depression. A closer investigation into this association could play a role in helping people improve their mental health.
“Sitting is a sneaky behavior,” said Jacob Meyer, assistant professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University and lead author of the paper. “It’s something we do all the time without thinking about it.”
As the director of the Wellbeing and Exercise Laboratory at ISU, Meyer and his team look at how physical activity and sedentary behaviors are related to mental health, and how changes to those influence the way people think, feel and perceive the world.
“In March 2020, we knew COVID was going to affect our behavior and what we could do in lots of weird, funky ways that we couldn’t predict,” Meyer said.
To get a snapshot of those changes, Meyer and a team of researchers 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 well-being (e.g., depression, anxiety, feeling stressed, lonely).
“We know when people’s physical activity and screen time changes, that’s related to their mental health in general, but we haven’t really seen large population data like this in response to an abrupt change before,” Meyer said.
Survey data showed participants who were meeting the U.S. 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.
Meyer and his fellow researchers published their findings in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health last year.
Meyer’s latest paper in Frontiers in Psychiatry served as a follow-up to see whether the participants’ behaviors and mental health changed over time. Participants filled out the same survey each week between April and June.
“In the second study, we found that on average, people saw their mental health improve over the eight-week period,” Meyer said. “People adjusted to life in the pandemic. But 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.
Meyer emphasized that finding an “association” between sitting and mental health is not the same as saying more sitting causes depression. He said 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.
“It’s certainly worthy of more investigation,” Meyer said, adding that monthly survey data from June 2020 to June 2021 are intended to become publicly available soon. “I think being aware of some of the subtle changes we’ve made during the pandemic and how they might be beneficial or detrimental is really important as we look to the other side of pandemic life.”
Meyer said both starting and stopping a habit is very difficult, even when someone wants to change their behavior. But he hopes 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.
Meyer recommended people take breaks when sitting for long periods of time.
“If you’re no longer walking down the hall for in-person meetings, you can still incorporate that break from sitting by taking a short walk before and after your Zoom call,” Meyer said.
People working from home can try walking around the block before and after the workday to mimic their pre-pandemic commute, which Meyer said can benefit people physically and mentally, and help add structure to the day.
Researchers at Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin and University of Limerick contributed to this research.
About this psychology research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Iowa State University
Contact: Press Office – Iowa State University
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“High Sitting Time Is a Behavioral Risk Factor for Blunted Improvement in Depression Across 8 Weeks of the COVID-19 Pandemic in April–May 2020” by Jacob D. Meyer et al. Frontiers in Psychology
Abstract
High Sitting Time Is a Behavioral Risk Factor for Blunted Improvement in Depression Across 8 Weeks of the COVID-19 Pandemic in April–May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited increased sedentary behaviors, decreased moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and worsened mental health, yet the longitudinal impact of these changes and their inter-relations remains unknown.
Our purpose was to examine associations between changes in self-reported activity behaviors and mental health over an 8-week period following the COVID-19 outbreak. Participants from all 50 states and the District of Colombia were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling at baseline April 3–10, 2020.
Prospective data from 2,327 US adults with ≥2 responses (63.8% female; 74.3% response rate) were collected weekly via online survey for eight consecutive weeks (April 3–June 3, 2020). Primary exposures were self-reported time spent sitting, viewing screens and in MVPA, with primary outcomes being depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and positive mental health (PMH).
A significant sitting-by-time interaction (p < 0.05) showed slightly higher marginal effects for depressive symptoms for the 90th-percentile of sitting time than the 10th-percentile at baseline (5.8 [95% confidence interval = 5.5–6.2] vs. 5.7 [5.4–6.1]), with the difference magnifying over time (week 8: 3.5 [3.2–3.9] vs. 2.7 [2.4–2.9]). No other interactions over time were significant. Screen time was negatively associated with PMH and positively associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms (p < 0.05). Sitting time was negatively associated with PMH (p < 0.05). Rapid changes in sitting patterns (e.g., due to a pandemic) may have lasting effects on depressive symptoms.
Strategies targeting those most affected (i.e., young adults, females) and/or focused on reducing sitting time may be critical for preventing long-term mental health effects resulting from COVID-19 or other large-scale behavior changes in the general population.
