The benefits of chronic sport participation and acute exercise on mental health and executive functioning in adolescents.

Adolescents are experiencing a growing mental health crisis, with one in seven afflicted by conditions such as depression and anxiety. This crisis is compounded by insufficient physical activity, as over 80% of adolescents fail to meet the World Health Organization's recommendation of at least 60 min of daily exercise. This combination of rising mental health disorders and sedentary behavior presents a serious public health challenge, increasing the risk of long-term cognitive and emotional impairments. While both chronic and acute exercise improve mental health and executive functioning, there is a significant gap in the literature exploring these effects within the same study, particularly among adolescents. Moreover, limited research has assessed how different types of sports differentially impact mental and cognitive health outcomes. This study uniquely addresses these gaps by investigating the effects of chronic sports participation (strategic vs. self-paced) and a single bout of acute exercise (physical education class) on mental health and executive functioning in adolescent athletes (n = 44) and non-athletes (n = 19). Our findings demonstrate that chronic participation in strategic sports significantly reduces stress, while self-paced sports enhance cognitive flexibility. Additionally, across all groups, a single session of acute exercise led to marked improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, and processing speed. These results highlight the importance of both chronic and acute physical activity in adolescent health and underscore the differential cognitive and emotional benefits of sport type. This study advances the literature by showing that physical education and sport participation, in school settings, are critical to fostering mental and cognitive health in adolescents, providing a novel understanding of exercise interventions.