Physical Activity and Risk of Depression: Does the Type, Frequency and Number of Activities Matter? UK Biobank...

To examine the risk of incident depression according to volume, type, frequency, and duration of physical activity (PA) in adults from the UK Biobank cohort.

We included 160,358 individuals (55.1% women), aged 38-70 years, free of depression and other mental health disorders, who underwent baseline assessment between Mar-2006 and Oct-2010. Participants reported their participation in walking, light do-it-yourself (DIY), heavy DIY, strenuous sports, and other exercises. Depression onset was extracted from primary care and hospital admission records (censored: 2016 to 2021).

During a median follow-up of 10.01 years, 5,363 participants developed depression. The risk of depression onset was lower in participants who participated in walking (hazard ratio [95% confidence interval]=0.84 [0.75, 0.93]), light DIY (0.86 [0.76, 0.96]), heavy DIY (0.76 [0.67, 0.87]), sports (0.62 [0.49, 0.78]), and other exercises (0.78 [0.69, 0.88]). Those performing one, two, three, four and five types of PA had a 15%, 20%, 26%, 36% and 54% lower risk of incident depression, respectively. Combining walking, DIY and structured PA resulted in a 29% reduced risk of depression. Overall, moderate PA volume (150-300 min/week), frequency (1-3 times/week), and session duration (60-120 min) were associated with the largest reductions in the risk of developing depression.

Engaging in a variety of light and moderate-vigorous PA, over relatively low frequency or session duration, was associated with substantial reductions in the risk of depression. Promoting the incorporation of PA into daily routines might be a useful population-level strategy for preventing depression.