Is exercising better for your Mental Health?

ObjectiveTo correlate psychological changes with exercise. MethodologyThis cross sectional study was conducted on 102 participants in a known Gym with age group 17-75 (28.3 {+/-} 10.4, 70.59% males). They were given "Rosenberg self-esteem Questionnaire", "Satisfaction with life scale" & "Hamilton & Becks Depression Inventory" in pen-paper type and were asked to fill it twice; once at the present time and once in retrospection before they started doing exercise. Three different values of Self-esteem, Satisfaction and Depression were collected. Answers from these Depression, Self-esteem questionnaire and Satisfaction questionnaire were summed up to get the final individual score. ResultsOverall gain was 62.53% suggesting positive impact of exercise. Highest impact was seen in age group of 17-30 of 72.46%. Lower education groups showed significantly higher gain, compared to higher educational groups (191.80%vs42.64%,p<0.05), which may be because of already higher scores in pre-exercise stage among higher education group. Target-achievers showed significantly higher gain compared to non-target-achievers (84.84%vs33.18%,p<0.01)). ConclusionExercise has an overall positive impact on satisfaction, self-esteem and reduction in depression. People are influenced by different factors into getting fit and most of them agree that body image has a value in their perception of any individual.