A word from the Editor - MARTIN TOWNSEND

If over-exercising can have a surprisingly negative effect on your physical health, it can also affect your mental state, at least according to some research which appeared in newspapers last week Having grown up with a manic depressive father for 26 years and both founded and overseen this paper's decade-long Crusade For Better Mental Health, I'm not a fan of this sort of research The main reason this latest study concerns me is that I think it's at least unwise and possibly even dangerous to try to impose too many rules about what is good and bad for mental health.

The study's conclusion that "Moderate exercise" - exercising three to five times a week - is good for mental health, might sound reasonable but who really knows what "Moderate" is? As my friend Patrick pointed out, gym workouts can lead to physical problems for some people and that's not going to improve anyone's mental state Perhaps that's a kind of low-level mental illness, but the alternative could be far worse One speaker made the point that we should try to recognise the "Coastline" of our mental health: the moment at which we should ask ourselves why we are doing a certain thing, particularly if it's something we are doing obsessively. Source