There is increasing academic and clinical interest in how “lifestyle factors” traditionally associated with physical health may also relate to mental health and psychological well‐being. In response, international and national health bodies are producing guidelines to address health behaviors in the prevention and treatment of mental illness. However, the current evidence for the causal role of lifestyle factors in the onset and prognosis of mental disorders is unclear. We performed a systematic meta‐review of the top‐tier evidence examining how physical activity, sleep, dietary patterns and tobacco smoking impact on the risk and treatment outcomes across a range of mental disorders. Results from 29 meta‐analyses of prospective/cohort studies, 12 Mendelian randomization studies, two meta‐reviews, and two meta‐analyses of randomized controlled trials were synthesized to generate overviews of the evidence for targeting each of the specific lifestyle factors in the prevention and treatment of depression, anxiety and stress‐related disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Standout findings include: a) convergent evidence indicating the use of physical activity in primary prevention and clinical treatment across a spectrum of mental disorders; b) emerging evidence implicating tobacco smoking as a causal factor in onset of both common and severe mental illness; c) the need to clearly establish causal relations between dietary patterns and risk of mental illness, and how diet should be best addressed within mental health care; and d) poor sleep as a risk factor for mental illness, although with further research required to understand the complex, bidirectional relations and the benefits of non‐pharmacological sleep‐focused interventions. The potentially shared neurobiological pathways between multiple lifestyle factors and mental health are discussed, along with directions for future research, and recommendations for the implementation of these findings at public health and clinical service levels.

Background There is now evolving data exploring the relationship between depression and various individual lifestyle factors such as diet, physical activity, sleep, alcohol intake, and tobacco smoking. While this data is compelling, there is a paucity of longitudinal research examining how multiple lifestyle factors relate to depressed mood, and how these relations may differ in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) and those without a depressive disorder, as ‘healthy controls’ (HC). Methods To this end, we assessed the relationships between 6 key lifestyle factors (measured via self-report) and depressed mood (measured via a relevant item from the Patient Health Questionnaire) in individuals with a history of or current MDD and healthy controls (HCs). Cross-sectional analyses were performed in the UK Biobank baseline sample, and longitudinal analyses were conducted in those who completed the Mental Health Follow-up. Results Cross-sectional analysis of 84,860 participants showed that in both MDD and HCs, physical activity, healthy diet, and optimal sleep duration were associated with less frequency of depressed mood (all p < 0.001; ORs 0.62 to 0.94), whereas screen time and also tobacco smoking were associated with higher frequency of depressed mood (both p < 0.0001; ORs 1.09 to 1.36). In the longitudinal analysis, the lifestyle factors which were protective of depressed mood in both MDD and HCs were optimal sleep duration (MDD OR = 1.10; p < 0.001, HC OR = 1.08; p < 0.001) and lower screen time (MDD OR = 0.71; p < 0.001, HC OR = 0.80; p < 0.001). There was also a significant interaction between healthy diet and MDD status (p = 0.024), while a better-quality diet was indicated to be protective of depressed mood in HCs (OR = 0.92; p = 0.045) but was not associated with depressed mood in the MDD sample. In a cross-sectional (OR = 0.91; p < 0.0001) analysis, higher frequency of alcohol consumption was surprisingly associated with reduced frequency of depressed mood in MDD, but not in HCs. Conclusions Our data suggest that several lifestyle factors are associated with depressed mood, and in particular, it calls into consideration habits involving increased screen time and a poor sleep and dietary pattern as being partly implicated in the germination or exacerbation of depressed mood.

Background: Increasing cardiovascular fitness through exercise participation among sedentary people is important for decreasing all-cause mortality. From an intervention perspective, identifying modifiable factors that maximize the successful initiation of exercise is of utmost importance. For women, cyclic hormonal variations can influence aspects of health and health behaviors, from smoking cessation efficacy to physiological responses to exercise. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of menstrual cycle phase and hormonal contraceptive (HC) use on subjective response to an initial bout of moderate intensity exercise among previously sedentary women (n ¼ 117). Methods: Women completed a treadmill exercise challenge session at 65% of their previously determined maximum oxygen consumption (Vo 2 max) during the early follicular, late follicular, or luteal phase. Participants reported ratings of perceived exertion and pain using Borg's Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and CR10 scales at 10, 20, and 30 minutes during the exercise session.Results: There was a significant menstrual phaseÂbirth control interaction on change in RPE [F(2, 111) ¼ 3.75, p < 0.05] and change in perceived pain [F(2, 110) ¼ 3.31, p < 0.05]. Women in the early follicular phase who were not using HCs had significantly greater increases in RPE and increases in pain compared with women in the late follicular and luteal phases. Conclusions: Our results indicate that the use of HC and cycle phase influence sedentary women's subjective response to exercise. These results have important implications for the timing of exercise interventions aimed at increasing exercise among sedentary women.

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