Abstract
Substantial evidence shows that physical activity and fitness play a protective role in the development of stress related disorders. However, the beneficial effects of fitness for resilience to modern life stress are not fully understood. Potentially protective effects may be attributed to enhanced resilience via underlying psychosocial mechanisms such as self-efficacy expectations. This study investigated whether physical activity and fitness contribute to prospectively measured resilience and examined the mediating effect of general self-efficacy. 431 initially healthy adults participated in fitness assessments as part of a longitudinal-prospective study, designed to identify mechanisms of resilience. Self-efficacy and habitual activity were assessed in parallel to cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, which were determined by a submaximal step-test, hand strength and standing long jump test. Resilience was indexed by stressor reactivity: mental health problems in relation to reported life events and daily hassles, monitored quarterly for nine months. Hierarchical linear regression models and bootstrapped mediation analyses were applied. We could show that muscular and self-perceived fitness were positively associated with stress resilience. Extending this finding, the muscular fitness–resilience relationship was partly mediated by self-efficacy expectations. In this context, self-efficacy expectations may act as one underlying psychological mechanism, with complementary benefits for the promotion of mental health. While physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness did not predict resilience prospectively, we found muscular and self-perceived fitness to be significant prognostic parameters for stress resilience. Although there is still more need to identify specific fitness parameters in light of stress resilience, our study underscores the general relevance of fitness for stress-related disorders prevention.
Highlights
Being physically inactive ranks among the most important public health problems in modern days, as it has been found to be the fourth-leading risk factor of death worldwide and is associated with increased incidence of mental disorders [1,2,3,4]
Quantification of stressor reactivity score (SR score; based on linear regression modelling across T1 to T3) indicated a significant linear positive relationship between combined stressor exposure and mental health problems (R = 0.41, p < 0.001, N = 1078)
As we found that fitness seems to come along with reduced stressor reactivity, represented by less mental health problems, our findings can be considered to be in line with the Cross-Stressor Adaptation hypothesis (CSA) hypothesis
Summary
Being physically inactive ranks among the most important public health problems in modern days, as it has been found to be the fourth-leading risk factor of death worldwide and is associated with increased incidence of mental disorders [1,2,3,4]. While prevalence of stress-related mental disorders continues to rise, 25% of European adults are estimated to be insufficiently active which did not change over the past decade [2]. These statistics are startling, given the comprehensive evidence for the potential mental and physical health benefits of physical activity and fitness. Physical activity has been suggested as a protective factor against the development of common stress related mental health problems. Based on the lack of methodological comparable investigations and data on both, activity levels and objective fitness measures, there is a substantial need for population-based studies focussing on the association between fitness components and future risk of adverse mental health outcomes
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