Network Approaches for Physical Activity and Mental Health Research

Physical activity has shown positive effects for depressive and anxiety disorders and is considered as potentially remediating for other mental health problems. Nevertheless, the exact mechanisms of action, symptom-specific effects, and individual differences in treatment response to physical activity are not fully understood. The network approach to psychopathology facilitates studying how the symptoms of mental disorders are interconnected in a complex system, rather than arising from a single (latent) underlying cause as implied in conventional analytic methods. Including physical activity in these symptoms networks can advance understanding of the role physical activity plays across various mental health problems, such as symptom-specific effects and influences on symptom-symptom connections (i.e., network structure). We discuss actual and potential applications of adopting network approaches in research seeking to understand the relationships between physical activity and mental health problems using cross-sectional and (intensive) longitudinal data structures, as well as their limitations.