How Does Exercise Improve Mental Health And Treat Mental Illness?

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 20% of all adults in the US were living with a mental illness in 2019.

The term “mental illness” covers a wide range of disorders, from mild anxiety or depression, to more serious conditions like major bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Some people need professional treatment and others might simply need to switch up their lifestyle. I believe that consistent exercise is one of the best ways to improve your mental health.

I am not a professional so everything I say is just my opinion, based on my own experiences and doing some research. Part of the reason I started MindBodyPrime was to bring awareness to the growing mental health crisis we face. This topic is often ignored, especially among men. I’ve worked through my own mental health issues in the past and I know what it’s like firsthand to struggle with your mental health.

How exactly does exercise affect our brain, and change how we think, feel, and act? To answer this, I’ll bring up a few different articles to summarize the research we have available.

Let’s take a closer look at that 20%. According to the National Institute of Mental Health study, 20% of adults in the US were living with a mental illness in 2019. The actual number might be different today because of the pandemic, and this number only includes people who participated in the study.

Of those who did participate, 18-25 year olds represent the majority age group, which accounts for about 30% of all adults living with a mental illness. 26-49 year olds followed closely behind at 25%.

The study also has two categories of people: those who have Any Mental Illness (AMI), and those who have a Serious Mental Illness (SMI).

Any Mental Illness, like the name suggests, includes any disorder ranging from no impairment to severe impairment. So the 20% number represents all people in this category.

Out of all these people, only a quarter of them have a Severe Mental Illness, which is a disorder that causes severe impairment and interferes with, or limits daily activities. So that’s about 5% of everyone.

I’m not an expert, but based on these definitions, not everyone who has a mental illness has one that’s considered severe. Only a quarter of the people living with an illness had one that interferes with their daily lives, and therefore they need professional treatment beyond just making lifestyle changes. So it means that 75% can find other ways to manage their condition.

I’m not sure if this conclusion is completely accurate because I don’t think you can objectively measure how “severe” a disorder is for anyone. Mild symptoms might be considered severe for someone else, and just because you can manage your symptoms with little impact to your daily life, doesn’t mean someone else can.

The reason why I bring this up is not to discount anyone who falls into the 75% category, as if to say that you should just “man up” and deal with everything on your own. If you’re struggling, you should talk to a professional.

But the way I see it is three out of every four people who suffer from mental health issues could find different ways to manage and treat their symptoms. Making lifestyle changes and practicing healthy coping skills are the foundation to seeing mental health improvements.

I believe that exercising and working out are some of the best ways you can improve your mental health, regardless of how serious your symptoms might be.

Exercise improves your mental health in two important ways.

First, it affects the physiology of the brain, changing the neurochemicals and how our brains functions as an organ.

Second, it affects our psychology, which is how we think, feel, and act.

How Exercise Improves Physiology of the Brain

Let’s consider an article written by Monika Guszkowska titled, Effects of exercise on anxiety, depression, and mood. The original article was written in Polish, but Pubmed has an English translation of the article summary.

She confirmed that exercise has a positive effect on depression, anxiety, and mood. In particular they found that exercise reduces anxiety and depression after just a single 15-30 minute session. So the benefits are immediate. The positive changes are mostly a result of increased blood flow to the brain and the brain releasing neurotransmitters like endorphins, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.

Without getting too deep into the science, here’s a crash course on what each of these neurotransmitters do:

Endorphins help promote an overall sense of well-being and they act as a natural pain reliever in response to pain. This is the chemical that’s responsible for producing the “runners high”, or the feelings of euphoria after a good workout.

Serotonin helps to stabilize your mood and it promotes feelings of happiness, among other things.

Norepinephrine improves your ability to deal with anxiety, react to stressful situations, and helps you concentrate on difficult tasks.

And of course, everyone’s favorite — Dopamine. I’m sure we all know what Dopamine does. It makes us feel pleasure, satisfaction, and helps us feel motivated to get things done.

As if that wasn’t enough of a reason to exercise, an article published on Harvard Medical School’s website titled, Regular exercise changes the brain to improve memory and thinking skills, says “the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t.” In other words, consistent exercise improves your memory, ability to think, and prevents your brain from shrinking as you get older.

Part of the reason exercise improves thinking and memory is because it helps you sleep better, which helps your brain function better. Getting better sleep also helps your mood, and when you’re in a good mood, you’re more likely to act in ways that are beneficial to your life.

So we know that exercise helps our brains function better, the next question is, how does it improve our psychology — how we think, feel, and act? Let’s talk about some of these benefits.

Psychological and Behavioral Benefits of Exercise

An article published in the Frontiers in Psychiatry titled, Effects of Exercise and Physical Activity on Anxiety talks about the following three psychological benefits: reduced anxiety sensitivity, increased self-efficacy, and distraction.

Reduced Anxiety Sensitivity

When you exercise, you are intentionally creating a stressful situation for your body and mind. Your brain sees this as a potential threat, and it causes you to feel anxiety. But each time you push through the discomfort and find out that nothing bad happens, you teach yourself that stressful situations are not as bad as they seem.

There’s an inverse relationship, meaning as one goes up the other goes down, between anxiety sensitivity and exercise frequency. It makes sense because as you exercise more, you’re training your mind to not think of challenging situations as much of a threat, so it makes you less sensitive to anxiety.

And this doesn’t just apply to when you’re working out, it carries into your daily life. When things happen unexpectedly and cause feelings of anxiety, you’re already used to dealing with stress and discomfort because you consistently exercise. So as a result, these situations don’t affect you as much as they normally would.

Increased Self Efficacy

This leads me to the second benefit, increased self efficacy. A man named Albert Bandura wrote about this back in 1977. According to Bandura, “self efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation.”

This sounds a lot like self confidence, but they’re not quite the same thing. Self efficacy has more to do with how believing in yourself causes you to think, feel and act in certain ways, so there’s a strong behavioral component to self efficacy. Self confidence is more just having trust in yourself.

For example, when it comes to exercise, you probably have fitness goals, whether it’s to look a certain way, improve your endurance, have more energy, get a PR on a heavy lift, or lose 20 pounds.

Let’s break it down even further, let’s say your goal is just to make it to the gym three days this week for 30 minutes a day.

Every time you follow through and accomplish a goal that you set your mind to, you’re getting a little dose of self efficacy. As you see consistent progress week by week and you get in better shape, you’re confirming to yourself that you’re capable of accomplishing what you set your mind to.

The cool thing about self efficacy is you start to gain momentum as you see results. So in the beginning you might have a lot of self doubt, but after awhile, you find that   you don’t get as sore as you once did, or you can run further distance without stopping, or you can lift heavier weights for more sets. You start gaining momentum and this increase in self efficacy causes you to think, feel, and act in ways that benefit your life. It motivates you to continue getting better.

Exercise is a Healthy Distraction

Last but not least, the article talks about how exercise is a great distraction. Simply put, it allows you to set time aside during a stressful day. The idea here is that it becomes like a “time out” away from your daily activities and allows you to process everything that’s going on in your life.

I used to look at weightlifting as a form of meditation, and to some extent I still do. I also do more of a traditional meditation every morning where I sit quietly with my eyes closed, but in the past, working out was my meditation. It was that time during the day when I didn’t have to worry about anything else that was going on and I could just focus on hitting the weights.

Or if the weather’s nice, I’ll take a nice long walk and give myself a break from everything else that’s going on. This gives me the time that I need to process my thoughts and get grounded on the things that truly matter.

Conclusion

Let me just say that I understand people have real problems out here. I’m not suggesting that an exercise routine is gonna magically improve your situation.

In my 20s, I went through a period where all I cared about was bodybuilding and working out. It was the solution to all my problems — or so I thought. Long story short, it didn’t work. Exercise was not enough to fix everything. I had to change other habits and routines in my life to get to where I am today. I don’t have it all figured out, but one thing I learned is that exercise is only just a piece of the puzzle.

With that said, it’s been a very important piece of the puzzle for me. I wanna challenge you to start exercising if you’re not where you wanna be. If you’re struggling, ask yourself if you’re truly doing everything in your power to improve your situation. Are you leaving any stone unturned in the pursuit of bettering your life?

When I was getting my personal training certification, they told us to make sure that people get cleared by a doctor before they start a new exercise program. So if it’s been a little while, you should get the green light from your doctor first.

Once you’re ready, start with light to moderate intensity cardio, or “aerobic exercises”, like running, walking, swimming, cycling, or anything else that gets your heart rate up. Do this for 30 minutes a day, three days a week and build up from there.

You don’t need to go super hard or lift heavy right off the bat. Be patient and let your body catch up to your ambitions. The last thing you want is to injure yourself. That’s not good for your self efficacy.