Sitting A Lot 'Blunted' People's Recovery From Depressive Symptoms Amid COVID-19 Pandemic: Study

Reduced physical activity affected people's mental health early in the pandemic, researchers found in 2020. In a follow-up study, they have found that sitting for long periods of time affected people's recovery from depressive symptoms.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an abrupt change for people across the world who were suddenly spending more time sitting down as they worked from home. The time previously spent walking to meeting rooms was replaced by the simple click of a button, while the time usually spent on exercise was now devoted to watching Netflix, Iowa State University (ISU) noted in a news release.

A team of researchers took the opportunity to have a closer look at how this affected people's mental health. For their study, which was published last year, the researchers collected data on more than 3,000 survey participants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia from April 3 to 8, 2020. They reported the time participants spent for activities such as sitting compared to before the pandemic, as well as changes in their mental well-being.

The researchers found that the participants who usually met the U.S. Physical Activity guidelines during pre-pandemic times saw a 32% decrease in physical activity "shortly" after the COVID-19-related restrictions were put in place. These were also the participants who reported feeling depressed, lonely and anxious, ISU noted.

In their current study, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry and is a follow-up to the 2020 study, the researchers looked at whether there were changes in the behaviors and mental health of the participants over time. To do this, they had the participants fill out the same survey every week from April to June.

They found that the participants' mental health generally improved during the eight-week period after the initial implementation of the COVID-19 measures, but those who maintained high sitting times did not quite recover from their depressive symptoms the same way that others did. Their improvement from depressive symptoms was "slower and limited."

"(H)igh sitting time during this period was associated with a blunted recovery from elevated depressive symptoms and is of public health concern," the researchers wrote.

This association doesn't mean that sitting itself causes depression, study lead Jacob Meyer of ISU noted in the news release. Instead, there is the possibility that "people who were more depressed sat more or that people who sat more became more depressed," or perhaps there was another factor that was not identified.

"It's certainly worthy of more investigation," Meyer said in the news release. In fact, data from June 2020 to June 2021 will be available "soon."

"Strategies that target limiting overall sitting time may be important for preventing long-term mental health effects of lockdown periods or other periods of major workplace and societal shifts," the researchers wrote.

By recognizing these habits that people have formed, they can also try to find ways to break it and hopefully improve their mood and mental health. Sitting has also been linked to increased risks for chronic health problems, so less of it may help boost one's chances of living a healthier life.

For instance, the simple act of taking a break between periods of sitting for a long time can help.

"If you're no longer walking down the hall for in-person meetings, you can still incorporate that break from sitting by taking a short walk before and after your Zoom call," Meyer suggested.

Talking a walk before the workday or perhaps during lunch may also help, and so is making healthier choices such as opting for the stairs instead of the elevator.