ArticlePloS one2022
The antidepressant effect of physical exercise: Evidence from China Family Panel Studies.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Does public spending on sports improve people's health? Empirical evidence from China.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Connection between college students' sports activities, depression, and anxiety: the mediating role of self-esteem.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- The mediating role of life satisfaction in the relationship between physical exercise and depressive symptoms among middle-aged and elderly individuals.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- A study on the relationship between physical exercise and feelings of inferiority among college students: the chain mediating effect of social support and emotional regulation ability.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Multiple studies have proved that participating in sports can effectively reduce adults' depression. This paper provides evidence from China by using the survey data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), which contains sport-types, personal characteristics, and CES-D20 depression-scale score data of 33,236 individuals. In addition to the Ordinary Least Squares regression model, we adopt the Two-way Fixed Effect and Propensity Score Matching method to alleviate the endogeneity. The empirical result shows that for every additional time of physical exercise, the depression level drops by an average of 0.152; the depression level of people who participate in sports is significantly lower than that of non-participants by 0.397 points. The lowering effect of physical activity on depression is not linear, and excessive exercise may lead to increased depression. Furthermore, heterogeneity analyses discover that with the increase of age and education, the impact continued to expand. For every increase in physical exercise of the group over 76-year old, the depression level decreased by 0.373 points; while for individuals with primary school education, their depression level decreased only by 0.124 points.
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Registered trials
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