The Effect of Morning Exercise on Mental Health of Female Police Employees

Background & Aims of the Study: According to the report of world health, organizationmental disorder is one of the important causes of disability in the world and it can result indecrease in the success and advancement of employees. Thus, the purpose of this researchis evaluation and comparison of mental health status and its related factors in femaleemployees who take part in morning exercise and who are exempt in one of the policeunits. This is a descriptive-analytic and cross sectional study.Materials & Methods: The population of this research included 85 female employees whotook part in morning exercise as one group and the other group included 65 inactive peoplewho were ill and exempt from exercise. The measurement tool in the research was theGoldberg and Hiller questionnaire of mental health that was consisted of 28 questions.Various studies in the world and in Iran suggest the high validity and reliability of theGHQ-28 questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire has been approved in more than70 countries and its reliability has been estimated to be between 82% and 92% in differentresearches and in different social groups. The data were analyzed using the descriptivestatistics (frequency, mean and standard of deviation) and deduction statistics (independentt-test) in SPSS 16 software.Results: Analysis of the research hypotheses at significant level (p<0.05) showed thatmorning exercise had significant effect on mental health and its subscales such as physicalcomplaint, anxiety, social dysfunction and depression in employees. Moreover, asignificant difference was observed by comparing the active and inactive groups in relationto mental health and its subscales.Conclusions: The results of the research show that the effect of exercise and physicalactivities on mental health can t be denied. According to the researches that have been done,exercise is effective in two aspects of physical and mental.