The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have created a series of public health problems by exacerbating mental health challenges, and making physical activity difficult to maintain for people. A study revealed that lower-income households struggled more with both mental health challenges, and maintaining physical activity levels.
Findings of the study were written in the paper 'Examining the relationship between physical activity and mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic across five US states', and have been published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports. Co-author of the study, Lindsey Haynes-Maslow said, “We know that physical activity is important for helping people maintain their mental health, but this study reveals the unforgiving cycle that the pandemic has imposed on many people.”
"The pandemic has increased psychological distress, which makes it more difficult for people to maintain their physical activity levels. This, in turn, further hurts their mental health, which makes them less likely to be active, and so on. Once you get on this roller coaster ride, it's hard to get off. And all of this is exacerbated by the pandemic making it harder for people to find safe spaces in which to exercise,” she added.
The study researchers focused on two questions: How is the pandemic influencing physical activity and mental health status? And how, if at all, do physical activity and mental health status relate to each other? The researchers conducted an in-depth, online survey of 4,026 adults in Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and West Virginia.
The researchers found that the more physically active people were, the better their mental health status. That held true even when accounting for an individual's race/ethnicity, household income and other socioeconomic demographic variables. They also found that the higher an individual's household income, the more likely they were to be able to maintain pre-pandemic physical activity levels. Specifically, people in households that earned less than USD 50,000 per year were 1.46 times less likely to maintain their pre-pandemic levels of physical activity as compared to people in households that earned more than USD 50,000 per year.
“This rural/urban finding was somewhat surprising, because normally - when we're not in a pandemic - people in rural areas tend to report more mental health challenges than their urban counterparts,” Haynes-Maslow said.
Shelly Maras, co-author of the paper, said, “Fortunately, the survey was designed to help understand each study participant’s mental health and physical activity levels before and during the pandemic. The survey also included open-ended questions that allowed us to analyze rich, qualitative data related to respondents’ mental health and physical activity.”
“We need structural changes in communities to ensure people have equitable access to safe spaces where they can be active. That will require policy changes and funding to create the necessary infrastructure: sidewalks, streetlights, green spaces. This will require significant investment, and it will take time, so we need to begin acting on this now. It is much less expensive to invest now than it is to pay for the long-term consequences of poor physical and mental health,” Haynes-Maslow concluded.
