The Effect of Acute Exercise on Affect and Arousal in Inpatient Mental Health Consumers

Abstract

Acute exercise performed at a self-selected intensity improves affect and may improve long-term adherence. Similarly, in people with severe depression, acute aerobic exercise performed at self-selected intensity improves affect and arousal. However, the relationship between changes in affect and arousal and perceived exercise intensity in people with mental illness has not been evaluated. Affect and arousal were assessed immediately prior to, and immediately following, a group exercise program performed at a self-selected intensity in 40 inpatient mental health consumers who received a diagnosis of anxiety or bipolar or depressive disorders. Exercise intensity was assessed immediately after exercise. Postexercise affect was significantly improved for people with bipolar and depressive disorders but not for people with anxiety disorders. For the group as a whole, results showed a significant curvilinear relationship between ratings of perceived exertion and postexercise affect. These data will inform the development and delivery of future exercise interventions for inpatient mental health consumers.

Acute Effect of Physical Exercise on Negative Affect in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Pilot Study

“…Our findings resemble a previous investigation examining the effects of acute PE on core affects in adults with severe mental illness (depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder) using the FS and the FAS (Stanton et al, 2016). Authors reported a significant increase of valence only among participants with bipolar disorder or depressive disorder but not anxiety disorder.…”

“…Similar results but with higher effect sizes have been demonstrated in adults with generalized anxiety disorder (d = 1.01;Herring et al, 2019), major depressive disorder (d = 1.25;Meyer et al, 2016b) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (d = 0.76; Abrantes et al, 2009). Another study (Stanton et al, 2016) also measured the effect of a 20-minute session on core affects (valence and arousal) in individuals with anxiety, bipolar, and depressive disorders and reported an increase in arousal for individuals with depressive and bipolar disorders, and an increase in valence (more positive affects) in all the participants.…”

“…Finally, the comorbid psychiatric disorders were not considered. These disorders are frequent in this population and may have modulated the response to exercise (Stanton et al, 2016).…”

Embedding exercise interventions as routine mental health care: implementation strategies in residential, inpatient and community settings

“…18 Moreover, evaluation of the impacts of individualised interventions show condition-specific association with sleep 19 and acute changes in mood. 20 These findings highlight the importance of adapting PA interventions to the needs of the individual consumer.…”

Acceptance of the Use of Pedometers in Individuals with Bipolar Disorder

“…For this reason, alternative treatment programmes that focus on the prevention of medical comorbidities in BD have to be implemented. Interventions that foster regular exercise and self-assessment of physical activities have to be developed for clinical practice [17,18].…”