The relationship between exercise and gender in mental health of staff of Red Crescent society of Tehran

The results of the latest research on relief workers have shown that they did not have good mental health than others just because they exposed to stressful job situations. However, researchers always emphasized sport activities as an effective strategy for improving mental health. Therefore, this study aims to compare mental health status of male and female relief workers of Red Crescent society and to determine the importance of exercise in mental health for these groups. In this descriptive and causal-comparative study, four groups were selected and studied (25 patients for each group) by using available sampling such as: 1) trained male relief workers; 2) trained female relief workers; 3) untrained male relief workers; and 4) untrained female relief workers. All groups filled the selfadministrated questionnaire of individual information and SCL-90 psychological disorder questionnaire. Data analyzed by a one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s post-hoc tests. The results showed that a relatively high percentage of relief workers (31%) had a mental disorders score above the cut-off points. In addition, trained and untrained men had higher average mental health than their opposite-gender counterpart. However, the difference was not statistically significant. Finally, reporting the results of the one-way ANOVA results, mental health of trained women and men is significantly more than their untrained peers. According to the results, it is suggested that the officials of relative organizations should consider sport programs and competitions due to its positive effects on relief workers’ mental health as a useful and easy solution in order to reduce harmful effects of job stress.