Studies investigating the relationship between physical activity and mental health are mostly limited to adults. In adults, physical activity has been shown to have a short term mood-enhancing effect.
Moderate levels of intensity and duration of physical activity have been shown to have a stress-reducing effect, but an additional increase of either the duration or the intensity will not have further beneficial effects. For children and adolescents, it is assumed that physical activity is associated with good mental health, especially in relation to self-esteem, self-efficacy, greater perceived physical competence, greater perceived health and well-being, but there is almost no evidence that the amount of physical activity is related to better social and moral development or to psychological variables such as body image, academic functioning, social skills, anxiety, hostility and aggression.
An important issue that must be considered with regard to the relationship between physical activity and mental health is that it is difficult to distinguish between cause and effect. Physical activity can have a positive effect on self-esteem or perceived physical competence, but on the other hand, children with higher self-esteem and/or perceived physical competence will be more likely to participate in sports activities.
For young children, not much research is performed regarding the relationship between physical activity and mental health. However, the few studies performed also show for this age group that self-esteem is increased by an increase in physical activity.
No real dose–response relationship or threshold value could be determined. Surprisingly, in contrast to elderly individuals in whom relatively high levels of physical activity can postpone the natural cognitive decline, in children and adolescents, physical activity does not seem to be related to cognitive (or academic) performance.
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