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Young children who walk to school or the local shop are less likely to suffer from poor mental health as teenagers, a study suggests.
Researchers said ‘every step counts’ when it comes to not only physical but mental health, with active youngsters displaying changes in their brains linked to movement and mood.
The study, on more than 5,500 adolescents in the US with an average age of around 12, saw them given Fitbit devices to wear for three weeks.
A year later, researchers checked in on their mental health, using the child behaviour checklist, a widely used questionnaire completed by young people and their parents to measure symptoms such as anxiety, low mood and behavioural problems.
The results showed that the more children walked, the fewer mental health problems they had a year later.
Teenagers who took under 5,000 steps a day had the most symptoms of poorer mental health, while those averaging around 8,000 had fewer and those hitting 12,000 or more had the fewest of all.
Adolescents with the highest step counts also showed slightly thicker brain tissue in two areas involved in movement and regulating emotion, researchers found.
There was no link found between step count and how well they did at school.
Young children who walk to school or the local shop are less likely to suffer from poor mental health as teenagers
The experts concluded: ‘In this study, higher daily step counts were associated with structural differences in the brains of adolescents, which were in turn associated with better mental outcomes prospectively.
‘Beneficial associations for mental health appeared to accrue continuously across the observed range, with no evidence of a threshold or plateau, highlighting that every step counts and the potential value of promoting daily steps in adolescents.’
The study was led by the King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, working with the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Dr Divyangana Rakesh, from King’s and senior author of the study, said: ‘This study gives us some of the clearest evidence yet that even an everyday, low-cost, accessible measure of physical activity like daily step count is tied to how adolescent brains and mental health develop.
‘What’s striking is that we don’t see this benefit levelling off in the observed range, even among the most active young people in our sample.’
Dr Amanda Paluch, associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said: ‘Adolescence is a key period for brain development and mental health, so it’s encouraging to see that physical activity’s benefits extend to both.
‘It is not an all-or-nothing situation.
‘Adolescents don’t need to be elite athletes to benefit, 1,000 to 2,000 higher daily step increments, from any starting point, was associated with better brain structure and mental health outcomes, and that beneficial association keeps building from there.
‘The goal is finding realistic, sustainable ways to move more, through everyday opportunities like walking to school, active play and activities kids actually enjoy, so these benefits are accessible wherever an adolescent is starting from.’
