Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Aug 9:10:943435.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.943435. eCollection 2022.

Thirty years of research on physical activity, mental health, and wellbeing: A scientometric analysis of hotspots and trends

Affiliations

Thirty years of research on physical activity, mental health, and wellbeing: A scientometric analysis of hotspots and trends

Michel Sabe et al. Front Public Health. .

Erratum in

Abstract

The sheer volume of research publications on physical activity, mental health, and wellbeing is overwhelming. The aim of this study was to perform a broad-ranging scientometric analysis to evaluate key themes and trends over the past decades, informing future lines of research. We searched the Web of Science Core Collection from inception until December 7, 2021, using the appropriate search terms such as "physical activity" or "mental health," with no limitation of language or time. Eligible studies were articles, reviews, editorial material, and proceeding papers. We retrieved 55,353 documents published between 1905 and 2021. The annual scientific production is exponential with a mean annual growth rate of 6.8% since 1989. The 1988-2021 co-cited reference network identified 50 distinct clusters that presented significant modularity and silhouette scores indicating highly credible clusters (Q = 0.848, S = 0.939). This network identified 6 major research trends on physical activity, namely cardiovascular diseases, somatic disorders, cognitive decline/dementia, mental illness, athletes' performance, related health issues, and eating disorders, and the COVID-19 pandemic. A focus on the latest research trends found that greenness/urbanicity (2014), concussion/chronic traumatic encephalopathy (2015), and COVID-19 (2019) were the most active clusters of research. The USA research network was the most central, and the Chinese research network, although important in size, was relatively isolated. Our results strengthen and expand the central role of physical activity in public health, calling for the systematic involvement of physical activity professionals as stakeholders in public health decision-making process.

Keywords: CiteSpace; evidence synthesis; mental illness; physical exercise; scientometrics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Author OS has received advisory board honoraria from Otsuka, Lilly, Lundbeck, Sandoz, and Janssen in an institutional account for research and teaching. Author JF has received consultancy fees from Parachute BH for a separate project. Author BS is on the Editorial Board of Ageing Research Reviews, Mental Health and Physical Activity, the Journal of Evidence Based Medicine and the Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry. Author BS has received honorarium from a co-edited a book on exercise and mental illness, advisory work from ASICS & ParachuteBH for unrelated work. Author MSo has received honoraria/has been a consultant for Angelini, Lundbeck and Otsuka. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Co-citation reference network with cluster visualization (1988–2021). The unit of measure are articles and constitutes nodes. Nodes are organized according to year of publication. The size of a node (article) is proportional to the number of times the node has been co-cited. Colored shades indicate the passage of the time, from past (purplish) to the present time (yellowish).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Co-occurrence authors' keyword network (2016–2021). In this co-occurrence author's keywords analysis, the size of the cross is proportional to the frequency of keyword occurrence.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Co-cited author's countries (A) (1988–2021) and co-cited author's institutions network with corresponding clusters (B) (2016–2021). Both the co-cited author's countries and co-cited author's institutions permits to reveal the collaborative country network. Betweenness centrality organize the network, with the countries presenting the most important centrality being at the center of the network. Nodes are according to each network, countries or institutions. The outermost purple ring denotes the centrality level, and highly central nodes are considered pivotal points in the research field. We limited the nodes to the 80 first countries.

References

    1. Thompson WR, Sallis R, Joy E, Jaworski CA, Stuhr RM, Trilk JL. Exercise is medicine. Am J Lifestyle Med. (2020) 14:511–23. 10.1177/1559827620912192 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lee D-C, Artero EG, Sui X, Blair SN. Mortality trends in the general population: the importance of cardiorespiratory fitness. J Psychopharmacol. (2010) 24(4 Suppl.):27–35. 10.1177/1359786810382057 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rezende LFM, Sá TH, Markozannes G, Rey-López JP, Lee IM, Tsilidis KK, et al. . Physical activity and cancer: an umbrella review of the literature including 22 major anatomical sites and 770 000 cancer cases. Br J Sports Med. (2018) 52:826–33. 10.1136/bjsports-2017-098391 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Schuch FB, Vancampfort D, Firth J, Rosenbaum S, Ward PB, Silva ES, et al. . Physical activity and incident depression: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Am J Psychiatry. (2018) 175:631–48. 10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.17111194 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Svensson M, Brundin L, Erhardt S, Hållmarker U, James S, Deierborg T. Physical activity is associated with lower long-term incidence of anxiety in a population-based, large-scale study. Front Psychiatry. (2021) 12:714014. 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.714014 - DOI - PMC - PubMed