There’s no health without mental health, but gyms very often treat mental wellbeing as less of a priority than physical health. What’s the best way forward?

One in four people in the UK suffers from mental health issues – that’s one person in every typical family.

Mixed depression and anxiety is the most common condition, with 9 per cent of people in the UK meeting the criteria. One of the contributory factors is long-term stress – often a result of pressure at work. There’s also evidence to show that depression and suicide have risen in response to the economic downturn. And it’s a growing problem: the World Health Organisation forecasts that, by 2020, depression will be second only to coronary heart disease as a leading contributor to the global burden of disease.

Although GPs tend to prescribe anti-depressants sooner than they prescribe exercise, research proves exercise can be a very effective treatment for mental health: a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry indicated that people who were not active in their leisure time were almost twice as likely to suffer symptoms of depression than the most active individuals. The more activity, the less chance of being depressed (see p56).

Personally, I’ve found that the mental and emotional benefits derived from exercise are almost instant and certainly come way before any physical benefits. And I’m not alone in this: a survey conducted by mental health charity MIND indicates that many people exercise to keep their mood steady Indeed, 83 per cent of respondents said they exercised to help lift their mood or reduce stress, while seven out of 10 gym users with no mental health issues thought their mental wellbeing would suffer if they didn’t exercise.

This suggests the fitness industry should be doing more to push the mental and emotional benefits of exercise, rather than focusing so heavily on weight loss. But how can operators go about this? How do you engage people with mental health issues and market programmes without applying negative labels? What sort of exercise appeals to people with mental wellbeing issues? What training do staff need? We ask the experts....