Effects of the participation to a sports program on the mood in psychiatric patients

Abstract

【Introduction】It has been well known that sport activities improve mental health in normal people. On the other hand, although opportunities of sport activities are provided at some welfare facilities in Japan, such as Day Care Centers, little is known about how sport activities affect mental health in psychiatric patients (PPs). The aim of this paper is to study what mood changes were produced by the sport activities in the PPs.

【Methods】30 PPs regularly engaging themselves in sport activity (rSP : n=30) in the facility and 11 PPs not regularly engaging (iSP : n=11) and 15 normal volunteers (n= 15) participated in the survey. Batteries used were Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) as an index of subjective hardness of the exercise, and Waseda Affect Scale of Exercise and Durable Activity (WASEDA) that consists of three subscales (negative affect (N), positive engagement (P) and tranquility (T)) as measures of the changes in mood. Those scores were compared before sport activity (a soft volleyball game) (PRE) and just after it (POST).

【Results】RPE after sport activity was significantly larger as compared with that before sport activity in normal subjects (p<0.001), but they did not differ significantly in rSP or iSP. In rSP and iSP, the RPEs in pre-activity were significantly higher than that of normal subjects, indicating greater negative moods in these two groups even before sports activities. The N score of WASEDA significantly decreased at POST compared with at PRE in normal subjects, but it did not change significantly in rSP or iSP. On the other hand, the P score significantly increased at POST compared with pre-activity in normal subjects and rSP, but no significant changes were found in iSP (normal : p<0.001, rSP : p<0.05). The T score did not change significantly at all in either group.

【Discussion】Although our results confirmed that physical exercise was effective for improving the mental condition in normal subjects, PPs showed good responses only in some of the investigated scores. According to WASEDA, the negative affect score in mood (N) was unchanged in both patient groups, presumably because the change had already taken place in both rSP and iSP before sport activity. In contrast, positive engagement score (P) of PPs seemed to be affected by the regularity of sport activity, with patients more regularly engaged in sport activity showing a more positive change. No conclusion could be drawn for the tranquility (T), because it is known that the change in T subsides already few minutes later after cessation of physical activity. The results suggest that the response to physical exercise in PPs differ between the subscales, and may be affected by the regularity of sport activity in some of the scales.