Bridging movement and mental health

Emily Hindman
Federation University, Australia

This new book is a timely contribution to an increasingly interdisciplinary field. The evidence for an association between physical activity and improved mental health is now considerable with benefits in mood, stress, anxiety, cognition, sleep, and quality of life. Yet the evidence does not generalise evenly across populations: effects vary by group, activity type, setting, and mechanism, while implementation in practice continues to lag the evidence base.

Across 15 chapters, the book moves beyond narrow concerns with performance enhancement or exercise adherence to address global trends in exercise psychology, affect, anxiety, executive functioning, body image, weight-related stigma, sleep, music, international applications, and professional practice. This scope is consistent with current research, which has considered physical activity not only as a target for behaviour but as an integral part of emotional experiences, cognition, identity and social experience. This broader framing is important because the psychological meaning and effects of exercise vary depending on who exercises, in what context, and for what purposes.

A particular strength is the breadth of perspectives brought together across sport, exercise, health behaviour, and mental health. Research consistently shows that physical activity can support mental health but also demonstrates substantial individual differences in response, engagement, and tolerability. Findings from generally healthy and physically active populations cannot necessarily be transferred directly to clinical settings without considering symptom burden, motivation, recovery capacity, and self-regulatory skills. This is especially relevant when altered arousal, avoidance of bodily sensations, or difficulties with emotional regulation form part of a person’s clinical presentation. The book provides a useful foundation for considering these differences, although the extent to which they are addressed varies across chapters.

Emerging work suggests that exercise may influence mental health through processes such as stress appraisal, self-efficacy, and other self-regulatory mechanisms; however, these same processes may also help explain why some people benefit more than others.

The collection of individual chapters is ambitious in its organisation, moving between conceptual material, applied topics, and regional perspectives. This allows readers to see how general evidence and practical questions intersect across different domains. Rather than treating exercise and mental health as a single, uniform topic, the book brings together chapters that address different psychological outcomes, populations, and applied settings. This structure helps show why broad claims about the mental health benefits of exercise often need further qualification. Its inclusion of internationally focused chapters is especially important because it signals that the meaning, accessibility, and application of physical activity are shaped by cultural and regional contexts rather than assumed to transfer unchanged across settings.

Some chapters take the challenges of translating broad findings into practice seriously, while others present approaches that are more difficult to apply across the diverse field of mental health. The most convincing chapters recognise that exercise is not a universally experienced intervention, nor one to be prescribed identically across populations. Physical activity involves physiological and psychological demands alongside potential therapeutic benefits, and its effects likely depend on how individuals interpret and regulate exertion, discomfort, fatigue, and arousal. Emerging work suggests that exercise may influence mental health through processes such as stress appraisal, self-efficacy, and other self-regulatory mechanisms; however, these same processes may also help explain why some people benefit more than others. Framed this way, the key question is not simply whether exercise is associated with improved mental health but when, for whom, at what dose and intensity, and under what conditions it is likely to be helpful, neutral, difficult to sustain, or potentially harmful. Where chapters acknowledge these distinctions or research gaps, the argument is considerably stronger.

This matters because physical activity is itself a physiological stressor that increases cardiovascular demand, sympathetic activation, and arousal. For many individuals, these changes are experienced as energising or pleasurable and followed by recovery. For others, particularly those with difficulties interpreting or regulating internal states, exercise-related sensations may be uncomfortable or difficult to manage. Where altered arousal is already a feature of a person’s mental health difficulties, an intervention beneficial for one population may be less appropriate, especially when intensity, recovery, and individual capacity for regulation are not adequately considered. Poorly matched practice recommendations may contribute to distress, reinforce perceptions of failure when activity cannot be sustained, or overlook circumstances in which increased physiological activation is not therapeutic. For some individuals, sustained or heightened arousal may further compromise regulatory capacity and, in the context of existing mental health difficulties, contribute to deterioration or a mental health crisis.

The international emphasis of the book reinforces this point: evidence does not transfer automatically across populations or settings, and the chapters explicitly consider how physical activity and mental health are understood through different cultural and social lenses. Its international chapters examine applications across Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, Asia, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Latin America, illustrating the importance of considering context when translating research into practice. Culturally and contextually relevant forms of activity may be particularly meaningful in some communities rather than peripheral to implementation. An approach that is achievable and psychologically beneficial in one setting may be inaccessible, culturally incongruent, or aversive in another. These chapters, therefore, provide a useful counterpoint to the tendency to move too quickly from evidence of an association to assumptions about how physical activity should be implemented.

The discussion of practitioner competence raises important questions about translating exercise psychology into practice. The final chapter considers the role of exercise psychology practitioners in promoting physical activity, focusing on competence, training, and practice. This is an important inclusion given the gap between evidence concerning physical activity and its application across mental health settings. Clearer consideration of professional roles, competencies, training, and boundaries is particularly important when physical activity is discussed in the context of mental health: expertise in exercise promotion does not automatically confer competence in mental health, just as expertise in psychological assessment or treatment does not necessarily confer expertise in exercise prescription. There is considerable potential for collaboration among exercise professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, and other health professionals, but such collaboration is most effective when each discipline contributes its specific expertise rather than assuming that evidence generated in one field can be directly transferred to another. The book’s emphasis on professional competence and working within one’s area of expertise is welcome, though this principle could be more explicitly reinforced in relation to mental health.

Overall, this book is valuable not because it offers a simple message that exercise is good for mental health but because it demonstrates why that message is incomplete. The most convincing interpretation of the current evidence is that physical activity often benefits mental health, yet these benefits are shaped by individual differences, psychological processes, social and cultural context, and the circumstances in which activity is undertaken. The book’s greatest contribution is to bring these perspectives into closer conversation. The next step for the field is to move from broad advocacy towards more precise translation: identifying when, for whom, in what form, and in which contexts physical activity is most likely to support mental health safely and effectively. Greater attention to individual differences in arousal, regulation, psychological vulnerability, and clinical presentation will be essential to ensure that enthusiasm for exercise as a mental health intervention does not outpace the evidence needed for its safe and effective application.

Copyright © Emily Hindman 2026