Mental health focused KPIs and progress parameters

[AlexWarendh]

It just hit me the other day. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, reasons why I'm exercising at this stage in my life is the get all the mental benefits of exercising, not necessarily to improve all my performance parameters.

Of course it's great the maintain or improve your stamina, see burnt calories, speed etc, but what I would love to see is all the mental health achievements I made for me and my brain for each specific activity.

I have two small children, I'm diagnosed with depression, I stress alot, I have relationship problems like everyone else. All of these things are destructive for your brain. You need to balance that and help your brain survive. And exercising is the best medicine.

I'm not sure of the science behind all of this, but I'm picturing different KPIs or even just visual graphs explaining all the great things you gave your brain. Just like "burnt calories" maybe there's someway to calculate the dopamine effect. Or it could even be different mental health insights based on your activity, i.e "Great workout! 30 min of exercising helps you sleep better" or "Repeat this type of workout at least two times these week to better help you cope with everyday stress" or even "This workout improved you dopamine levels by 20%".

I know the last one is hard to calculate and nothing could be an exact representation of the reality, but with some science based foundation behind it maybe something is possible.

KPIs and progress indicators exist to help you improve and should motivate you. But if your motives are different from the current available KPIs then there's definitely something missing in the app.

[Jane]

Hello @AlexWarendh 

​​Thanks for submitting your idea. It has been reviewed by our moderation team and is now open to voting.

[wellsy]

Hello there. I appreciate this idea was submitted a while ago, but a similar thought struck me recently. 

Exercise has some clear and understood benefits for mental health, as described in the original idea. 

However, a simple measurement of how people are feeling could be used to track their perceived mental health after exercise. Simply answering the question "Out of 10 (with 10 being the best) how are you feeling today / after this exercise?" would allow users to track the perceived benefits of their exercises over time, or for different exercise types.

I appreciate this is a difficult subject for some, so being able to opt out of this ranking would be important. It would also be important to find the right time to ask this question. After exercise is perhaps best, as asking daily may intrude on people's 'personal time'. 

Thanks for reading 🙂