Does exercise help mental health?
My name is Izzy, I am one of the Exercise Physiologists at Vector Health. One of my interests is using exercise as medicine to help people to have better mental health. This article talks about exercise as medicine for mental health.
Exercise is often framed as “general advice” — something people should do to feel better. However, evidence increasingly supports exercise as a dose‑dependent therapeutic intervention, with effect sizes comparable to antidepressant medications for mild to moderate depression and meaningful benefits across anxiety, stress, PTSD, and severe mental illness (Blumenthal et al., 2007; Cooney et al., 2013; Schuch et al., 2016).
Like medication, exercise has:
- Indications (e.g., depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder)
- Contraindications and precautions (e.g., cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, fatigue, medication side effects)
- Dose parameters (frequency, intensity, type, and duration)
What is the difference then between prescription of exercise as medicine versus training for performance?
An Exercise Physiologist is specifically trained with a view to prescribe exercise as preventative or treatment medicine. It sounds weird to hear exercise talked about like this. But it may be arguably the easiest “fix” to so many problems, and especially with mental health.
So, when we prescribe exercise as a performance intervention, we are thinking about the physical parameters, such as fitness, maximum strength or speed as the outcome. With medicine, we are thinking about health as the ultimate outcome.
Here is some science talk about how exercise can be viewed as medicine!
Biological Mechanisms: How Exercise Changes the Brain
Exercise influences mental health through multiple, well‑established physiological pathways:
1. Neurotransmitter Regulation
Exercise increases the availability and sensitivity of key neurotransmitters involved in mood regulation, including serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline (Meeusen & De Meirleir, 1995; Dishman et al., 2006). These are the same neurotransmitter systems targeted by many antidepressant and anxiolytic medications.
2. Neuroplasticity and BDNF
Regular physical activity increases Brain‑Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), a protein essential for neuroplasticity, learning and emotional regulation (Erickson et al., 2011; Szuhany et al., 2015). Reduced BDNF levels are consistently observed in depression; exercise helps reverse this deficit.
3. Stress Hormone Modulation
Chronic psychological stress is associated with dysregulation of the hypothalamic‑pituitary‑adrenal (HPA) axis and elevated cortisol. Exercise improves stress reactivity and enhances the body’s ability to return to baseline after stress exposure (Rimmele et al., 2009; Hamer, 2012).
Psychological and Behavioural Mechanisms
Beyond neurobiology, exercise addresses several core psychological contributors to mental illness:
- Improved self‑efficacy and mastery: Successfully completing exercise builds confidence and perceived control.
- Behavioural activation: Exercise directly counteracts avoidance and inactivity, a key maintaining factor in depression.
- Distraction and cognitive relief: Structured movement provides relief from rumination and intrusive thoughts.
- Routine and structure: Regular exercise supports circadian rhythm regulation, sleep quality, and daily function.
Importantly, these benefits are often observedeven when mood does not immediately improve, reinforcing exercise as a process‑based intervention rather than a quick fix.
What the Evidence Says About Different Types of Exercise
Research supports multiple exercise modalities for mental health, with no single “best” option — reinforcing the importance of individualised prescription (Stubbs et al., 2018; Schuch et al., 2019):
- Aerobic exercise (e.g., walking, cycling, swimming): Strong evidence for reducing depressive and anxiety symptoms.
- Resistance training: Demonstrates comparable antidepressant effects to aerobic exercise and improves self‑esteem and physical function.
- Low‑to‑moderate intensity exercise: Often better tolerated and associated with higher adherence in individuals with severe symptoms.
- Group‑based exercise: Adds social connection, which independently improves mental health outcomes.
So… coming to the end of my TED talk about how exercise can help your mental health, here is what you can do to get help?
- You can reach out to me, or one of my colleagues and book an appointment via email (reception@vectorhealth.com.au) or go to www.vectorhealth.com.au to book an appointment.
- When you book an appointment, we will schedule a time, where you can tell us all about what is happening, your medical history, what you do and don’t like about exercise so we can help you figure out the best way to prescribe exercise to help you.
- Then, we provide you with a program. We either book you a time to do individual, or in a group exercise maybe 1-3 times a week with us, so you have support, you make friends and we supervise what you do so you do it safely.
If you cannot come and see us in person, we are used to working virtually, so we will see you in person virtually and program you with an App, to help you know what to do and how to do it. We still catch up regularly with you.
This is a little education, a little of my passion to help people have a better life and some information on how we can help you. Please reach out to me via email on izzy@vectorhealth.com.au