COVID‑19: Physical activity, government restrictions, and mental health in the UK and Italy

Abstract

COVID-19 restrictions could potentially induce poor mental health. This study considers opposing government restrictions on outdoor physical activity in Italy and the UK to evaluate participants’ ability to conduct physical activity, the relationship between physical activity and mental health, and whether restrictions affect mental health as mediated by physical activity. Participants from the UK and Italy self-reported physical activity before and during restrictions, sociodemographic data, and symptoms of depressions, stress, and anxiety during restrictions. Changes in physical activity were analyzed by tests of differences, and relationships between mental health, physical activity, and the effect of country restrictions were evaluated through path analysis. Two hundred sixty-four participants (UK: 57%; Italy: 43%) responded. The model (χ2(2) = .429, p > .05; RMSEA  .90) confirmed the country’s effect on physical activity. Participants from Italy significantly decreased physical activity while the least active individuals in the UK increased activity during restrictions. Decreases in physical activity had a significant effect on increased reports of stress and depression. Physical activity did not mediate mental health within the countries. Future policies may consider ways to support individuals in maintaining physical activity habits to minimize the possibility of worsening mental health.

Rights

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Cite as

Downloadable citations

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-023-00262-2

Repository URI

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/bb90d2cc-c943-4ff9-94bc-7d1b54a53ad6