Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the association between the domains of physical
activity (work, travel, and recreation) and depression among Japanese adults. Data from 1,431 men
and 1,476 women (age: 30–59 years) who responded to an internet-based, cross-sectional survey
were analyzed. The survey included 1) depression measured by the Centre for Epidemiological
Studies Depression scale (CES-D), 2) physical activity measured by the Global Physical Activity
Questionnaire version 2 (GPAQ v2), and 3) covariates (gender, age, household income, educational
level, employment status, body mass index, smoking, drinking alcohol, and chronic disease). To
examine associations between depression and physical activity, logistic regression analysis was
used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI) for depression. Among
men, depression was significantly associated with the total (OR 0.71; 95% CI 0.57–0.88), travelrelated
(0.75; 0.61–0.94), and recreational (0.69; 0.54-0.87) physical activities. However, depression
was not significantly associated with work-related physical activity (1.00; 0.76–1.32) adjusted by
covariates. Among women, depression was significantly related to travel-related (0.69; 0.56–0.86)
and recreational (0.61; 0.48–0.79) physical activities. However, depression was not significantly
associated with total (0.81; 0.65–1.00) and work-related (0.89; 0.66–1.21) physical activities adjusted
by covariates. Therefore, these results showed that travel-related and recreational physical
activity was significantly associated with less depression among men and women.
