POWERFUL NEW RESEARCH FINDS MORE PROOF OF THE EXERCISE-MENTAL WELLNESS LINK

What motivated you and your team to take on this research?

On a personal level, I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between exercise and mental well-being—how the classic “healthy body, healthy mind” idea actually plays out in practice.

One of my broader aims has always been to influence the policy debate around depression and anxiety. Currently, the frontline treatments are predominantly psychotherapies like cognitive behavioral therapy and pharmaceuticals such as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and antidepressants. Those all have their place, and the evidence supports them. But what we wanted to understand was whether we could conduct a large-scale synthesis of the existing evidence to make the case for exercise to be elevated alongside those options—and to look at whether certain types of exercise, or exercise for certain groups, might be more effective than others.

What we conducted is called a meta-meta-analysis—essentially a synthesis of all the available evidence in the field at the time of the study. Within that, we were looking at differences in exercise formats, differences across age groups and population groups, and ultimately trying to produce outputs that could influence the conversation within the medical community.

What were the most surprising findings from the analysis?

The biggest surprise came from the population group data. We found that for perinatal women—those who are pregnant or in the first year postpartum—exercise had a particularly significant impact. That was above and beyond what we saw for other population groups, and there wasn’t as large a body of existing research in that area, which made the signal even more noteworthy.

We also found that group and supervised exercise had a significantly higher impact than individual exercise. We think what’s happening there is a combination of social psychology and accountability—if someone has committed to a supervised session or a group class, those social elements are doing real work. Aerobic exercise showed a higher impact overall. We’re still exploring why, but it was not what we expected going in.

What did the research show specifically about anxiety being different from depression?

That’s an important distinction. For anxiety, we found something that might challenge conventional thinking: Shorter forms of exercise at lower intensity appeared to have a higher impact than longer, more sustained, high-intensity sessions. Specifically, exercise sustained over eight to 24 weeks—things like brisk walking, swimming, or mind-body practices—at moderate intensity showed stronger results for anxiety than going all-out at the gym.

So, in a sense, that finding pushes back against the “no pain, no gain” mentality. For someone experiencing anxiety, the message is: Move, release some of that tension but don’t feel pressure to push yourself to exhaustion. Gentler, consistent movement may well be the more effective medicine.

You emphasize individualized exercise prescriptions. Why is that so central?

Because the evidence, however compelling, has to translate into something a real person can actually do. We can say group and supervised exercise had significantly higher outcomes—and that’s true—but that’s simply not accessible to everyone. If you’re living remotely, if you don’t have proximity to gyms or group classes, then telling someone to join a supervised group isn’t practical advice.

What we want to convey is that the best exercise is the one that fits your circumstances and that you can sustain. I’m a committed runner myself, but I can’t make it to running groups because they operate at times that don’t work for me. So I run at unusual hours. That works for me—and the commitment piece is really what matters. If you’re more motivated to do a particular form of exercise, you’re simply more likely to show up on those mornings when getting out of bed is the last thing you feel like doing.

Do you think Covid played a role in heightening awareness of the exercise-mental health connection?

Definitely. The social components of that period were significant. The isolation, the removal of group activity, the disruption to routines—I think all of that underscored just how much those things matter. And we see it reflected in the data. Group and supervised exercise shows meaningfully higher outcomes, which we believe is tied directly to the social component. Being around people, being accountable to others—those aren’t soft factors. They appear to have a compound effect on top of the biological benefits of exercise itself.

There also may be something specific to exercise interventions that are designed with the individual in mind—whether that involves a consultation with a health professional, a GP, or a personal trainer. That personalized design element seems to amplify results. So it’s not just the exercise firing off the beneficial neurochemicals; it’s everything around it.

How receptive is the medical community to the idea of exercise as a frontline treatment?

Since publishing this paper, I’ve heard from doctors and GPs all over the world—not just in Australia—and the responses have been encouraging. A number have reached out to say the research is helping stimulate a debate they’ve wanted to have. I even heard from a physician in Mexico who noted that practitioners there are formally instructed to default to antidepressants as the first line of treatment.

I looked at the guidelines issued to general practitioners in Australia, and while they include the standard public health messaging around physical activity, the physician-facing content is almost entirely focused on physiological contraindications—does this patient have heart conditions, lung problems, chronic disease? Those are legitimate considerations, of course. But there is very little in those guidelines that helps a GP say, “For this patient with depression, here are the forms of exercise most likely to help, and here is a recommended duration.”

That tool simply doesn’t exist in an accessible, practical format. That’s what we want to co-design with the medical community. Not to point fingers, but to support practitioners—to give them a resource that makes it easier to include exercise as part of the conversation with patients. Doctors are busy. If they had a straightforward reference guide that said, "For anxiety, try these forms of exercise at this intensity for this duration," I believe many of them would use it.

Tell us about the PAHL research group and the scope of its work.

PAHL is a joint initiative between James Cook University and the University of Western Australia, with collaborators at the University of South Carolina and institutions in the Midwest as well. It’s a remarkable group. The academics involved are doing important work across a wide range of topics: exercise and professional sport, exercise for children, exercise and aging, and more. My own study is one thread within a much larger body of research.

I’m fortunate to be supervised by James Dimmock, psychology professor at James Cook University, who has published around 50 papers in this field and is constantly pushing the conversation forward. PAHL’s overarching goal is to promote exercise as a practical, accessible solution—particularly for mental health—and to keep building the evidence base that helps make that case.

What populations or areas are you most eager to explore going forward?

The over-55 demographic is one I’m particularly keen to dig into—and I’ll admit there’s some personal motivation there, having just turned 55 myself. We found good evidence that exercise is effective for that group in relation to depression and anxiety, and there’s growing research suggesting physical activity may help delay the onset of dementia and similar conditions. That’s an area with enormous implications.

The meta-analysis covered something like 80,000 individuals across the underlying studies, and every form of exercise examined showed at least a medium standardized effect on depression and anxiety—with certain groups reaching into the high range. That scale of evidence is significant.

The more we dig into the data, the more nuanced and actionable the findings become. We have a number of studies in the pipeline, and I’m excited about where this field is heading.