Clusters of healthy lifestyle behaviours are associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies
Abstract
Engagement in healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviours are related to a range of mental health outcomes. Most existing research has focussed on individual lifestyle behaviours, so it is not clear the extent to which clusters of healthy lifestyle behaviours relate to mental health outcomes. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically review and quantitatively synthesise research which have examined the association between clusters of lifestyle behaviours with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress. A systematic search of five electronic databases were conducted to identify studies which used person-centred approaches (e.g., cluster analysis, latent class analysis) to identify subgroups of participants based on at least two unique lifestyle behaviours (i.e., physical activity/sedentary behaviours, diet, sleep, alcohol/tobacco/drug use) and examined differences in symptoms of depression, anxiety, or psychological distress between clusters. A correlated and hierarchical random effects meta-analysis was used to synthesise the results. A total of 81 studies reporting on nearly one-million individual participants were included in the review. Results demonstrated that participants who engaged in the healthiest clusters of lifestyle behaviours reported significantly fewer symptoms of depression (SMD = -0.41), anxiety (SMD = -0.43) and psychological distress (SMD = -0.34) compared to participants engaging in less healthy combinations of lifestyle behaviours,…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a meta-analysis. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Improving sleep quality leads to better mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials
- Tocilizumab in patients with severe COVID-19: a retrospective cohort study
- A new aging measure captures morbidity and mortality risk across diverse subpopulations from NHANES IV: A cohort study
- Fruit, vegetable, and legume intake, and cardiovascular disease and deaths in 18 countries (PURE): a prospective cohort study
- Are noise and air pollution related to the incidence of dementia? A cohort study in London, England
- Long COVID symptoms and duration in SARS-CoV-2 positive children — a nationwide cohort study
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.