Highlights We aimed to assess the mental status of older adults during the COVID-19 epidemic, exploring whether meeting the World Health Organization global recommendations on physical activity for health was associated with it. Our results showed that older adults who meet the global recommendations on vigorous and moderate-vigorous physical activity had higher resilience, positive affect, and lower depressive symptoms. This is the first quantitative verification of a link between engagement in vigorous and moderate-vigorous physical activity and resilience, positive affect, and depressive symptoms in older adults within the COVID-19 restrictions.

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Background The recent shelter-in-place order issued by the Spanish government (due to the outbreak of the COVID-19) forced the Spanish population to self-isolate at home. The psychological and social effects of this new situation are unknown. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the impact of such scenario on citizens’ resilience, as well as the connections between resilience, physical activity (PA), gender, weight and body mass index (BMI) before and after confinement, and COVID-19-related information. Methods A total of 1795 people answered an online questionnaire conducted on March 21st , , 2020, seven days after the mandatory shelter-in-place health order was issued. Results Results showed that individuals who regularly engaged in Vigorous PA during the first week of confinement reported higher resilience in terms of higher locus of control, higher self-efficacy, and higher optimism. Moreover, inter-personal resilience differences were observed based on gender, age groups, BMI, weight, and people living with dependent persons or under health risk conditions. Conclusion To the best of our knowledge, these findings are the first quantitative evidence pointing towards a link between engagement in Vigorous PA and resilience within the COVID-19 restrictions in Spain. These findings may have important implications for general population during the course of this pandemic, or future ones.

Background/Objective : The aim was to evaluate the evolution of depressive symptoms and to explore the influence of physical activity (PA) practice during the home confinement due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain. Method : Information was collected from 595 confined participants who reported personal and contextual information, depressive symptoms and PA levels at four time points. Results : The changes in depressive symptoms were analyzed using a linear mixed model with cubic splines. Results showed a significant increase, with a significant rise between T1 and T2 (OR = 2.38, 95% CI = 1.83-3.10). It continued growing until T4 (OR = 2.93, 95% CI = 1.97-4.38). A negative relationship was observed between the increase in depressive symptoms and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels, with a significant slope up to 4 hours of MVPA per week (OR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.29-0.90) that tended to increase until 16 hours per week of MVPA (OR = 0.41, 95% CI = 0.20-0.87). Conclusions : Results from a partition model showed that moderate intensity of PA could be enough to prevent an increase of depressive symptoms during home isolation.

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