Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Daniel Irish
Freshman Class of 29′, Prospective Economics and Psychology Major and Data Analysis Minor. Member of the Cross-Country and Track and Field Team at Wesleyan University
Abstract: Pediatric emergency department visits related to mental health from 2011 to 2020 had almost doubled, and it remains unclear whether sleep behaviors in adolescents confound the relationship between exercise and mental health. A nationally representative sample of 7,705 U.S.
high school students from public, Catholic, or other private schools was used for this project. Logistic regression analyses showed that the positive association between frequent exercise and mental health status remained significant after controlling for sleep. Both exercise and sleep are significantly associated with mental health among adolescents, even when each variable is controlled for the other.