The College of Education and Human Ecology is exploring how physical activity can improve students’ mental health.

The college is partnering with Wilce Student Health Center and Student Life Recreational Sport to conduct the study called “Exercise is Medicine™ for Student Resilience” to implement structured exercise into students’ lives.

The study targets those who aren’t active or are stressed to help enhance their mental health and resilience, Carmen Swain, director in health and exercise science and principal investigator of the study, said.

“Our main mission is to try to impact mental health and college students, that’s our goal,” Swain said.

The program is led by trained undergraduate students who work as research assistants or personal trainers. The fitness coaches meet weekly with student participants for nine weeks to do exercise sessions, Swain said.

Participants are required to wear a fitness tracker called a “WHOOP” that measures their health and fitness data throughout the program, Swain said.

“It measures a lot of your biometric data,” Swain said. “So, it measures your heart rate, your sleep and it’s pretty cool.”

The fitness tracker also helps researchers monitor participants’ stress levels to see if they are decreasing throughout the study, Jean-Pierre Khouzam, a second-year master’s student in kinesiology and research lead for the study, said.

“I like to call it a nicer Apple Watch,” Khouzam said. “Never take it off, you charge it on your wrist and it gives you a lot of insights. A lot more insights than just a normal Apple Watch would give you.”

Researchers also conduct pre- and post-testing to measure the changes in the students’ physical fitness and mental health status, Swain said.

Part of the testing is having participants take surveys that score measures like depression and loneliness, Swain said.

“The goal of the program is to see if the physical fitness programming led by these peers impacts their scores on these surveys,” Swain said.

The research is especially relevant now because many Ohio State students are struggling with high levels of anxiety, depression and loneliness, Swain said.

“Mental health is a crisis, especially for college students,” Swain said.

Many studies show that exercise can improve mental health, which is why the research study was developed, Khouzam said.

There are currently seven students participating in the study, and the goal is to have 20 participants by the end of the next semester, Khouzam said.

He hopes the undergraduate leads will gain valuable skills from the experience and see the impact they are making on others, Khouzam said.

“Hopefully they have an impactful experience to where they understand what research is about,” Khouzam said. “And then also they’re helping other people, which is huge in my eyes.”