Psychological and social health outcomes of physical activity around menopause: A scoping review of research

•Overall, physical activity has positive effects on psychological and social health.•No studies report a negative impact but a few do fail to find statistically significant effects.•The positive effects of physical activity are irrespective of menopausal status in most studies.•To understand the complexity of the issues women experience in this phase of life, future research needs to discuss, develop and validate definitions and measures of physical activity and the relevant outcomes.•Qualitative studies of psychological and social health outcomes of physical activity through the menopausal transition are warranted. To chart peer-reviewed literature regarding the psychological and social health outcomes of physical activity (PA) around menopause in a systematic manner. Nine electronic databases and 10 core journals were searched using specific search strings to identify eligible articles. Manual checking of reference lists was also performed. The selection process was guided by the stages in PRISMA-ScR. Eighty peer-reviewed articles representing 67 studies from 25 countries were included. All articles were published between 1994 and 2021. For all studies, surveys were the primary method of measuring psychological and social health outcomes, in cross-sectional studies (36 papers), intervention studies (33), longitudinal cohort studies (10) and one paper reporting a mixed-method study. The dataset comprised a total of 103,826 women, with an average age of 52.6 and a variety of menopausal states. Most of the studies involved primarily Caucasian, relatively healthy, married and employed participants. Nineteen psychological and social health outcomes were assessed, including psychological menopause symptoms (N = 34), quality of life (N = 33), depression (N = 30), anxiety (N = 11), mental wellbeing (N = 21), perceived stress (N = 9), satisfaction with life (N = 7) and self-esteem (N = 5). Collectively, the findings of these studies indicate a relatively evident positive impact of PA on the respective health outcomes, with only a few studies reporting no association. It is also noteworthy that most studies did not report any difference related to menopausal status. Future studies would benefit from, inter alia, a qualitative approach to lived experiences of psychological and social health outcomes of PA during the menopausal transition.