Teens Who Move More Cut Their Depression Risk

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by News Medical.

A research team at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology followed a large group of children and adolescents from age 6 to 18 and found that young adolescents who increase their physical activity from the age of 14 have a lower risk of developing depression later in life. The study is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

A significant increase in the prevalence of major depressive disorder has been observed among young people in the last decade. The childhood to adolescence transition period is particularly sensitive for the development of mental disorders, including depression.

Physical activity is a promising preventive intervention for mental health and overall well-being. For this investigation, researchers designed the study to explore “within-person” relationships between physical activity, sedentary time, and depressive symptoms. They included sedentary time in the analysis as it is a vital parameter to predict health, irrespective of physical activity. The use of within-person analyses in this study allowed the researchers to control for all stable, unmeasured confounders, providing more robust findings than traditional between-person comparisons.

The study analyzed data from 873 participants in the Trondheim Early Secure Study, a cohort study of children born in Trondheim, Norway, in 2003 and 2004. The participants were followed from age 6 to 18.

The participants’ physical activity was assessed using an accelerometer every two years, and clinical interviews were conducted to determine their mental health. The study analyzed seven rounds of data (6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 years) collected from them.

The study revealed that adolescents aged 14 to 18 years (middle to late adolescence) who have a lower level of physical activity are at higher risk of developing depressive symptoms two years later. This association was similar for male and female participants.

However, the study could not find any association between sedentary time and depressive symptoms. Regarding the opposite direction of influence, the study found that an increased number of depressive symptoms predicts decreased levels of physical activity from ages 10 to 12 and 14 to 16.

The study reveals that young people who increase their physical activity level from the age of 14 years are at lower risk of developing depressive symptoms later in life. While the protective association was found only from age 14 onward, the difference in effect size compared to earlier ages was not statistically significant.

Source: News-Medical
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250506/Norwegian-study-shows-teens-who-move-more-cut-their-depression-risk.aspx