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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Daily Overview

Session

WR1_2_2: Abstract presentations: Whole-School Approaches to Physical Activity and Health
Location: White room 1
Session Chair: Josef Mitáš

Presentation 4

11:45am - 11:55am

School-Based Physical Activity Promotion and Mental Health: A Population-Based Cross-Sectional Study of Finnish Adolescents

Tia Viskari^1,2, Timo Ståhl², Sari Fröjd¹, Jani P. Vaara³, Kaija Appelqvist-Schmidlechner²

1: Unit of Health Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; 2: Department of Public Health and Welfare, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland; 3: Department of Leadership and Military Pedagogy, National Defence University, Helsinki, Finland

Background: As central social environments in adolescents’ daily lives, schools play a pivotal role in fostering both physical activity (PA) and mental health. This study aims to investigate the associations between school-based PA promotion and mental health among Finnish adolescents.

Methods: The data were drawn from two sources: individual-level information from the Finnish School Health Promotion study and school-level information from the Finnish Benchmarking System for Health Promotion Capacity Building. The merged dataset included 77,721 pupils from 678 schools. School-based PA promotion was assessed across four categories. Mental health included depressive, anxiety, and social anxiety symptoms, as well as prosocial behaviour. Negative binomial regression and Poisson regression were used as a statistical method.

Results: In adjusted analyses, enabling the utilization of indoor sports facilities outside of physical education (PE) classes (incidence rate ratio [IRR]:1.01, 95% confidence interval [CI]:1.01–1.01) and encouraging pupils to engage in active commuting to school (IRR:1.01, 95% CI:1.01–1.01) were associated with higher levels of prosocial behaviour. Among girls, extended PA breaks were associated with reduced anxiety symptoms (IRR:0.97, 95% CI:0.96–0.99), whereas training pupils as peer instructors for PA was linked to higher levels of social anxiety symptoms (IRR:1.02, 95% CI:1.01–1.04).

Conclusions: School-based PA promotion may enhance adolescents’ prosocial behaviour and, among girls, reduce the risk of anxiety symptoms. To support adolescents’ mental health in the school setting, PA should be promoted through a multifaceted approach. However, caution is warranted when using peer-led strategies, as they may increase social anxiety symptoms among girls.