You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 30, Issue 1
  • Associations between device-measured and self-reported physical activity and common mental disorders: Findings from a large-scale prospective cohort study

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Original research
Associations between device-measured and self-reported physical activity and common mental disorders: Findings from a large-scale prospective cohort study
  1. Zhe Wang1,
  2. Zhi Cao2,
  3. Jiahao Min3,
  4. Tingshan Duan3,
  5. Chenjie Xu3
  1. 1 School of Clinical Medicine, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China
  2. 2 School of Public Health, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
  3. 3 School of Public Health, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China
  1. Correspondence to Dr Chenjie Xu; xuchenjie{at}hznu.edu.cn

Abstract

Objectives To investigate the associations between device-measured and self-reported physical activity (PA) and incident common mental disorders in the general population.

Design and setting Large-scale prospective cohort study.

Participants Using the UK Biobank data, a validated PA questionnaire was used to estimate self-reported weekly PA in 365 656 participants between 2006 and 2010 while 91 800 participants wore wrist-worn accelerometers for 7 days in 2013–2015 to derive objectively measured PA. All the participants were followed up until 2021.

Main outcome measures Incidences of depression and anxiety were ascertained from hospital inpatient records. Cox proportional hazards models and restricted cubic splines were used to assess the associations between subjectively and objectively measured PA and common mental disorders.

Results During a median follow-up of 12.6 years, 16 589 cases of depression, 13 905 cases of anxiety and 5408 cases of comorbid depression and anxiety were documented in the questionnaire-based cohort. We found J-shaped associations of self-reported PA with incident risk of depression and anxiety, irrespective of PA intensities. The lowest risk for depression occurred at 550, 390, 180 and 560 min/week of light-intensity PA (LPA), moderate-intensity PA (MPA), vigorous-intensity PA (VPA) and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA), respectively. During a median follow-up of 6.9 years, a total of 2258 cases of depression, 2166 cases of anxiety and 729 cases of comorbid depression and anxiety were documented in the accelerometer-based cohort. We found L-shaped associations of device-measured MPA and VPA with incident depression and anxiety. MPA was adversely associated with incident depression and anxiety until 660 min/week, after which the associations plateaued. The point of inflection for VPA occurred at 50 min/week, beyond which there was a diminished but continued reduction in the risks of depression and anxiety.

Conclusion Different patterns of associations between self-reported and device-measured PA and mental health were observed. Future PA guidelines should fully recognise this inconsistency and increasingly employ objectively measured PA standards.

  • Mental Disorders

Data availability statement

Data are available on reasonable request. The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjebm-2024-112933

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Data availability statement

    Data are available on reasonable request. The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • ZW and ZC contributed equally.

    • Contributors ZW and ZC conceived, designed, conducted the study and the analysis and interpretation of the results and wrote the first draft of the manuscript; CX conceptualized, designed the analysis, conducted results interpretation, and secured fundings; JM and TD have made critical revisions to the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed with the order of presentation of the authors; CX is the guarantor of this work.

    • Funding This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.72204071), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.LY23G030005) and Scientific Research Foundation for Scholars of HZNU (NO.4265C50221204119) to CX.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.