As
people adhered to stay-at-home orders or self-isolated during the early
months of the COVID-19 outbreak, daily commutes turned into shuffles
between the bedroom and the living room. Clicking Zoom links erased time
spent walking to meeting rooms, and Netflix spilled into time otherwise
dedicated to the gym.
In short, a lot of people suddenly became more sedentary during the onset of the pandemic.
Recently published research found people who continued to spend a
higher amount of time sitting between April and June 2020 were likely to
have higher symptoms of depression. A closer investigation into this
association could play a role in helping people improve their mental health.
"Sitting
is a sneaky behavior," said Jacob Meyer, assistant professor of
kinesiology at Iowa State University and lead author of the paper. "It's
something we do all the time without thinking about it."
As
the director of the Wellbeing and Exercise Laboratory at ISU, Meyer and
his team look at how physical activity and sedentary behaviors are
related to mental health, and how changes to those influence the way
people think, feel and perceive the world.
"In
March 2020, we knew COVID was going to affect our behavior and what we
could do in lots of weird, funky ways that we couldn't predict," Meyer
said.
To
get a snapshot of those changes, Meyer and a team of researchers
received survey responses from more than 3,000 study participants from
all 50 states and the District of Colombia. Participants self-reported
how much time they spent doing activities, like sitting, looking at
screens and exercising, and how those behaviors compared to pre-pandemic
times. Using standard clinical scales, they also indicated changes to
their mental well-being (e.g., depression, anxiety, feeling stressed,
lonely).
"We
know when people's physical activity and screen time changes, that's
related to their mental health in general, but we haven't really seen
large population data like this in response to an abrupt change before,"
Meyer said.
Survey
data showed participants who were meeting the U.S. Physical Activity
Guidelines (i.e., 2.5-5 hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity
each week) before the pandemic decreased their physical activity by 32%,
on average, shortly after COVID-19-related restrictions went into
effect. The same participants reported feeling more depressed, anxious
and lonely. Meyer and his fellow researchers published their findings in
the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health last year.
Meyer's latest paper in Frontiers in Psychiatry served
as a follow-up to see whether the participants' behaviors and mental
health changed over time. Participants filled out the same survey each
week between April and June.
"In
the second study, we found that on average, people saw their mental
health improve over the eight-week period," Meyer said. "People adjusted
to life in the pandemic. But for people whose sitting times stayed
high, their depressive symptoms, on average, didn't recover in the same
way as everyone else's."
The participants who continued to spend a large portion of their day sitting experienced blunted mental health improvements.
Meyer emphasized that finding an "association" between sitting and mental health is not the same as saying more sitting causes depression.
He said it's possible people who were more depressed sat more or that
people who sat more became more depressed. Or there could have been some
other factor that the researchers did not identify.
"It's
certainly worthy of more investigation," Meyer said, adding that
monthly survey data from June 2020 to June 2021 are intended to become
publicly available soon. "I think being aware of some of the subtle
changes we've made during the pandemic and how they might be beneficial
or detrimental is really important as we look to the other side of
pandemic life."
Meyer
said both starting and stopping a habit is very difficult, even when
someone wants to change their behavior. But he hopes more people will
recognize that even a little bit of movement can improve their mood and
mental health, and try to find ways to build it into their day.
Meyer recommended people take breaks when sitting for long periods of time.
"If you're no longer walking down the hall for in-person meetings, you can still incorporate that break from sitting by taking a short walk before and after your Zoom call," Meyer said.
People
working from home can try walking around the block before and after the
workday to mimic their pre-pandemic commute, which Meyer said can
benefit people physically and mentally, and help add structure to the
day.
Researchers at Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin and University of Limerick contributed to this research.