Cross-Sectional Associations Between 24-hour Activity Behaviours and Mental Health Indicators in Children and Adolescents: A Compositional Data Analysis

Abstract

Background. The prevalence of mental ill health increases with age through childhood and adolescence and likely impairs mental and physical health in adulthood. Little is known about the combined influence of sleep, sedentary time (ST), and physical activity on youth mental health. This study examined associations between youth 24-hour activity behaviour compositions and mental health indicators, and investigated predicted differences in mental health when time was reallocated between activity behaviours.Methods. Demographic information and anthropometric data were collected from 359 participants (aged 9-13 years; 50.7% girls). 24-hour activity behaviours (sleep, ST, light physical activity (LPA) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA)) were assessed using a wrist accelerometer, worn for 7 days. Validated questionnaires measured self-esteem, depressive symptomology, overall emotional and behavioural mental health, internalising problems, externalising problems, and prosocial behaviour. A computerised cognitive test battery assessed executive functions of switching, spatial working memory, and inhibition. Linear mixed models examined associations between activity behaviour compositions and mental health indicators for all participants and separately by primary and secondary school. Post-hoc analyses modelled the influence of reallocating fixed durations of time between activity behaviours on mental health.Results. For all participants ST was associated with worse internalising problems, relative to the other activity behaviours. Among primary school participants, relative to the other activity behaviours, ST was associated with poorer prosocial behaviour, and LPA was associated with worse switching and inhibition test scores. For all participants, reallocating time to ST from sleep and MVPA was associated with higher internalising problems. Among primary school participants, reallocating time to ST from any other behaviour was associated with poorer prosocial behaviour, and reallocating time to LPA from any other behaviour was associated with lower cognitive function.Conclusions. Relative to other activity behaviours, ST and LPA were significantly and unfavourably associated with some mental health indicators. These associations were strongest among primary school participants with no significant relationships observed for the secondary school participants. Replacing MVPA with ST or LPA reflected the greatest unfavourable predicted changes in mental health indicators. Our results provide further evidence for the influence of daily activity behaviours on youth mental health.

Adherence to 24-h movement behavior guidelines and psychosocial functioning in young children: a longitudinal analysis

“…sedentary time or physical activity). While researchers are starting to examine compositional time use in relation to mental wellbeing in children cross-sectionally [49,50], longitudinal data are scarce [51].…”

Cross-sectional associations between wake-time movement behaviour compositions and indicators of mental health among preschool children

“…From this perspective, it may not be surprising that we found replacing up to 25 mins of sedentary time with either LPA or MVPA confers negligible benefits for mental health. Although recent cross-sectional studies have shown movement compositions are positively associated with important physical and cognitive developmental outcomes in the early years (Bezerra et al, 2021;Kuzik et al, 2020;Mota et al, 2020), the benefits for mental health and wellbeing may not manifest until children are of school age (Fairclough et al, 2021).…”

“…Recent work using accelerometry has shown that 24-hour movement compositions significantly predict fundamental motor skills (Kuzik et al, 2020;Mota et al, 2020) and cognitive development (Bezerra et al, 2021;Kuzik et al, 2020) in preschool-age children. Although evidence has demonstrated beneficial associations between different intensities of physical activity and indicators of mental health within samples of children and youth between the ages of 6 to 17 years (Carson et al, 2016;Fairclough et al, 2021), the only study to examine these relationships among preschoolage children observed null relationships (Kuzik et al, 2020). Combined with the fact that children at risk for DCD experience higher rates of mental health problems beginning as early as the preschool years (Rodriguez et al, 2019), this dearth of research highlights the need for additional workparticularly among larger and more diverse samplesto better understand whether movement behaviours influence mental health in the early years.…”

Cross-Sectional Associations Between 24-hour Activity Behaviours and Motor Competence in Youth: A Compositional Data Analysis

“…Following institutional ethical approval (#SPA-REC-2018-007) written informed parent consent and participant assent were obtained from 382 students from ten primary and two secondary schools in the West Lancashire region of northwest England. From these, 359 students (23 were absent on data collection days) took part in the study between April 2019 and March 2020, as part of a wider project described elsewhere (14).…”

“…To obtain activity behaviours, participants wore triaxial accelerometers [ActiGraph GT9X, ActiGraph, Pensacola, FL, USA], set at 100Hz, on the non-dominant wrist for 24h•day −1 over 7 days. Data were processed in R [http://cran.r-project.org] using GGIR [v1.9.0](17), which performed auto-calibration procedures, identi ed non-wear, and converted raw triaxial accelerometer signals into 1 omnidirectional measure of acceleration (Euclidean Norm Minus-One; ENMO) (14,18,19). ENMO values were averaged per 5s epoch over the 7 monitored days to represent average acceleration expressed as milligravitational units (mg).…”