Regular exercise sessions can help to significantly reduce the occurrence of suicidal thoughts or attempts among teens who are being bullied, according to a new study.

Research to be published in the October 2015 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) reports that exercising four or more days per week is associated with a 23 per cent reduction in both suicidal ideation and attempts in bullied US adolescents.

Almost 20 per cent of students in the US have reported being bullied on school property, while anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label says seven out of 10 young people in the UK have reported being bullied online. As well as thoughts of suicide, suffering from bullying is associated with academic struggle, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and self-harm.

Led by Dr Jeremy Sibold of the University of Vermont, the researchers examined the relationship between exercise frequency, sadness, and suicidal ideation and attempt in 13,583 US adolescents aged 14 to 18. The authors hypothesised that exercise frequency would be inversely related to sadness and suicidality and that these benefits would extend to bullying victims.

The data showed that bullied students were twice as likely to report sadness, and three times as likely to report suicidal ideation or attempt than their peers, while regular exercise was associated with significant reductions in sadness, suicidal ideation, and suicidal attempt in all students. Most notably, the data showed a startling 23 per cent reduction in both suicidal thoughts and attempts in bullied students who exercised four or more days per week.

The authors concluded that exercise may represent a “safe, economical, and potentially highly effective option” in the response to bullying in schools. They also suggested the implementation of exercise programmes as a public health approach to reduce suicidal behaviour in all adolescents.

As well as being shown to help children be more confident and achieve better results at school, recent research has highlighted that forming an exercise habit in early teens can also reduce the risk of cancer in later life and help stave off diabetes.