Evaluation of a brief interval exercise training (IET) intervention for first-time prisoners with elevated anxiety symptoms

ABSTRACT

Background: Exercise training has a history of alleviating anxiety in various populations, but research into its effects on prison inmates is limited. Confinement to prison is a highly distressing event for those who have never experienced incarceration, which can dramatically increase anxiety-related symptoms and may exacerbate suicidal risk.

Methods: Thirty-seven first-time prisoners with elevated anxiety symptoms completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory before and after a 6-week long treatment period consisting of interval exercise training (IET; n = 20) or no intervention (waiting-list; n = 17). Prisoners in the IET intervention had to exercise three times per week (40 min per session) under the supervision of the first and/or second author. Exercise intensity was self-monitored using the Borg’s RPE-15 scale, with targets in the range 13–15 (“somewhat hard”-“hard”).

Results: Those who received the IET intervention showed a significantly greater reduction in anxiety than prisoners in the waiting-list. The effect size for IET was of moderate-to-large magnitude (Cohen’s d = −0.71).

Conclusion: The authors conclude that the lower levels of anxiety reported following IET suggest that supervised exercise training is an effective coping strategy to deal with incarceration.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04019171.

KEYWORDS:

• First-time prisoners
• interval exercise training
• anxiety

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Agence Régionale de Santé de Champagne Ardenne grant number 2015-51-3.2-150002.