Improving Practices of Mental Health Professionals in Recommending More Physical Activity and Less Sedentary Behaviour to Their Clients: An Intervention Trial

Abstract

We investigated the effects of increasing physical activity (PA) and reducing sedentary behaviour (SB) of mental health professionals on their attitudes towards and practices in recommending more PA and less SB to their clients. A 4-week pre-post intervention trial was conducted involving 17 mental health professionals. The participants who increased their own physical activity during the intervention increased the frequency of recommending more PA (p = 0.009) and less SB (p = 0.005) to their clients. A relatively simple, low-cost intervention, consisting of group behaviour change counselling, goal setting and positive feedback, may improve the practices of mental health professionals.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01612840.2021.1972189 .

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Author note

This article is a part of a PhD project of the first author, NS, supervised by AP, SJHB and ZP (principal supervisor).

Ethics

The ethical approval for the “Move More for Mental Health and Wellbeing” was provided by Victoria University Human Ethics Research Committee [HRE18-123] on 07/08/2018.