Motivating Clients to Exercise: Improving Adherence to Exercise-Based Treatment through Psychoeducation

Exercise has been consistently shown to have a positive effect on both physical and mental health, with past studies indicating exercise as an adjunctive treatment for diagnoses such as Major Depressive Disorder. However, despite the knowledge of exercise’s benefits, 80% of Americans do not regularly meet recommended levels of exercise in a week. Past studies have been hampered by high drop-out rates, as participants have difficulty sustaining a new exercise regimen over time. This study focused on understanding the motivational processes which sustained experienced exercisers. With the information gleaned from experienced exercisers in addition to past research on human motivation, a psychoeducational pamphlet was constructed in order to determine the motivational processes for nascent exercisers in addition to determining if the pamphlet, as an intervention, was helpful in sustaining new regimens. The study found that the psychoeducational pamphlet was not able to sustain new regimens when compared to a control condition. However, participants in the experimental condition demonstrated significant reductions in depressive and anxious symptoms at a follow-up compared to initial scores. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and the OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/