1. Benefits of Exercise and Mental Health

2. Background The Endorphin Hypothesis: Endorphins are released during exercise and they have been known to improve a persons mood. More exercise therefore causes more endorphins to be released, thus making the person more happy. This can relate to exercise influencing people suffering from mental health issues and illnesses in a positive way.

3. Key Study: Leith and Taylor(1990) Aim: to review 10 years worth of research studies into the effects of exercise on mental health to discover consistent findings, as well as assessing the findings and evaluating the methodology used. Procedure: 81 projects were reviewed These were then categorised into 3 groups based the system categorisation study by Campbell and Stanley(1963) The 3 categories were: -Pre-experimental research -Quasi-experimental research -Experimental research

4. Results Pre- experimental: 7/9 studies showed significant improvement. Quasi-experimental: 36/46 studies showed significant improvements. Experimental: 13/26 studies showed significant improvements and a further 5 showed partial improvements. 70% of studies reported showed significant improvement.

5. Conclusion The 70% increased to 80% when partial improvement were also added. Only 50% was a significant improvement in Experimental where as pre-experimental had 78% significant improvement. Leith & Taylor also stated that fitness improvements, type and duration of exercise need to be measured when researching more studies.

6. Real life Application These results can be used to help improve the state of mind of someone with a mental health problem and help the person to use exercise to change the persons mood.