The Effect of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior on Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among the Adult Population in the Rural Area of Perambalur: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background The global COVID-19 pandemic has been incredibly destructive, especially for mental health. The lockdown measures required people to stay in their homes. This lifestyle caused them to become sedentary, which could have an impact on both their physical and mental well-being. We used the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) and the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) to measure the physical activity (PA) and mental health of adults in Perambalur, India, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and methods The researchers conducted a cross-sectional investigation among people ages 15-60 years old from September 2021 to February 2022. In this study, we included 400 individuals through the method of convenient sampling. We conducted a population-based survey in which a semi-structured questionnaire was used to gather information on the age, gender, weight, height, physical activity (International Physical Activity Questionnaire {IPAQ}), and mental health (General Health Questionnaire-12 {GHQ-12}) of the participants. We conducted an analysis of the data using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 20 (IBM SPSS Statistics, Armonk, NY). Results Most of the participants (65.8%) were female, and 69.5% belonged to the age group of 20-24 years; their mean age was 23 years. Physical activity was scored using the IPAQ, and we divided the participants into three categories: 37%, insufficient; 58%, sufficient; and 5%, high activity. The GHQ-12 assessment revealed that around half of the participants (47.8%) had psychological distress. In a bivariate analysis, those in the 15-19 and 24-29 age groups reported more distress than those in the other age groups (p = 0.006). Those who engaged in sufficient physical activity (54.7%) reported more distress than those who engaged in high (25%) or insufficient activity (p = 0.002). Conclusion Nearly half of the participants experienced psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who were engaging in sufficient physical activity experienced higher levels of distress than those with high and insufficient activities.