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The relationship between physical activity and mental health has been addressed in recent years, paying attention to both the type (aerobic or anaerobic) and the amount of physical activity (frequency of performance, duration of the session). Much less frequently, the extent to which the context of physical activity might be enhancing or diminishing the mental health benefits of physical activity has been studied. Our aim in this paper is to examine the statistical association between physical activity and mental health in the Spanish population, in three different contexts (leisure, work and commuting), replicating the design of some previous studies (Vittengl, 2021; Werneck et al., 2021). To address the research objective, data from the latest European health survey, conducted in 2020, have been used. The results confirm the existence of significant differences depending on the context of physical activity, controlling for gender, age, education and employment, among other variables. This illustrates the importance of context and its differential statistical association with the beneficial nature of physical activity on mental health. The paper concludes with the formulation of some hypotheses about the mechanisms that might be involved in these results, as well as how they could be tested in future research.
