Evidence Shows that Exercise Can Improve Menta Health

At a glance

Exercise is a powerful mental health treatment: Large-scale analysis found physical activity reduces depression and anxiety, with benefits comparable to medication and psychotherapy.
Certain types and formats work best: Aerobic exercise, group or supervised programmes, and low-to-moderate intensity activity showed the strongest effects, especially for young adults and postnatal women.
Accessible but underused: Researchers urge exercise to be prescribed like other treatments, with better support to help people start and maintain routines.

A large-scale analysis has confirmed that physical activity is an effective treatment for depression and anxiety, with benefits comparable to psychotherapy and medication. Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the findings suggest that different types of exercise can be tailored to maximise mental health benefits for specific groups and conditions.

Depression and anxiety affect millions of people worldwide, and while medication and therapy are widely used, they are not effective for everyone. Exercise has long been explored as a complementary treatment, but earlier reviews struggled to isolate its effects because many studies included participants with chronic physical illnesses, which could confound results.

To address this, researchers conducted a “meta-meta-analysis,” pooling evidence from existing meta-analyses to provide the most rigorous estimate to date of how exercise influences mental health. Led by Neil Richard Munro from James Cook University, the team excluded studies involving participants with chronic physical conditions to ensure that any observed effects were directly linked to exercise.

The analysis included 63 umbrella reviews covering 81 meta-analyses, representing 1,079 studies and nearly 80,000 participants. Across all populations, exercise was associated with reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, with a medium effect for depression and a small-to-medium effect for anxiety.

For depression, all forms of exercise were beneficial, but aerobic activity such as running or cycling had the strongest effects. Group-based and professionally supervised exercise programmes were also more effective than exercising alone, highlighting the importance of social support. Young adults aged 18 to 30 and postnatal women showed particularly strong benefits.

For anxiety, aerobic exercise was again most effective, but resistance training and mind-body practices such as yoga or tai chi also helped. Shorter interventions of up to eight weeks produced the strongest improvements, and lower-intensity exercise appeared more effective than high-intensity workouts, possibly because intense exercise can mimic physical anxiety symptoms.

The researchers found that the mental health benefits of exercise were comparable to those of medication and psychotherapy, positioning physical activity as a legitimate clinical intervention. However, they noted limitations, including variation in how exercise intensity was defined, possible publication bias, and overlapping participants in some reviews.

The authors emphasised that motivation remains a major barrier and called for more research into how people with depression and anxiety can be supported to maintain exercise routines. They also argued that healthcare professionals should prescribe exercise with the same confidence as traditional treatments and that public health guidelines should explicitly recommend it as a first-line option, particularly for young adults and new mothers.

Overall, the study provides strong evidence that exercise is a powerful and accessible tool for improving mental health. The challenge now lies in integrating tailored exercise programmes into healthcare systems and ensuring that people are supported to adopt and sustain them.