Depression is characterized by persistent feelings of sadness and/or an inability to experience happiness, along with deficits in daily functioning (McCarron et al., 2021). Approximately 280 million people were living with depression (GBD 2019 Mental Disorders Collaborators, 2022). The China Mental Health Survey conducted in 2013–2015 found that the lifetime prevalence of depressive disorders was 6.8 % (Huang et al., 2019). Depression imposes a significant burden on society due to its related serious consequences, including increased risk of disability, suicide, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer (Harshfield et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2017). Therefore, it is critical to identify modifiable risk factors for depression and make efforts to prevent depression.

Physical activity (PA) has been suggested to play an imperative role in preventing depression (Pearce et al., 2022; Schuch et al., 2018). However, PA is undertaken in many life domains, including during leisure time, at work, transportation, and housework, while the supposed preventive effect on depression varies between different domains of PA (White et al., 2017). A number of studies showed that leisure-time PA was inversely associated with depression (Bennie et al., 2020; Currier et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2021; Mumba et al., 2021; Pearce et al., 2022; Schuch et al., 2021), however, very few studies have explored the associations of other domains of PA with depression. A study conducted in Brazil found that short-time (60–89 min/week) transport PA was associated with a lower risk of depression, while long-time transport PA was not (Schuch et al., 2021). The majority of studies investigating occupational PA and depression risk found no significant association (Baumeister et al., 2017; Huang et al., 2021; Mumba et al., 2021). In contrast, a study conducted in Australia reported an increased risk associated with occupational PA among women, and no significant association was observed among men (McKercher et al., 2009).

Studies investigated the associations between transport PA, occupational PA, household PA and depressive symptoms also reached inconclusive results. Some studies supported an inverse association of transport PA with depressive symptoms (De Cocker et al., 2021; Ryu et al., 2022; Werneck et al., 2020), whereas a cohort study among women from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods found that transport PA was associated with an increased risk of having depressive symptoms (Teychenne et al., 2017). Several studies reported that occupational PA was associated with an increased risk (Kull et al., 2012; Ryu et al., 2022; Werneck et al., 2020), while others showed no association (Baumeister et al., 2017; Smaradottir et al., 2020; Teychenne et al., 2017). Besides, data from the European Health Interview Survey suggested that occupational PA was inversely associated with depressive symptom severity (De Cocker et al., 2021). Evidence of the link between household PA and risk of depressive symptoms is limited. Two studies supported that household PA was associated with an increased risk of having depressive symptoms (Teychenne et al., 2017; Werneck et al., 2020), while others showed non-significant results or a positive association only for women (Mutrie and Hannah, 2007; Smaradottir et al., 2020). One possible explanation for the inconsistent results linking transport PA, occupational PA, and household PA to depression and/or depressive symptoms is that different studies used different scales to assess depressive symptoms and different methods to diagnose depression. In addition, most studies investigated one or two domains of PA, four studies investigated three domains (De Cocker et al., 2021; Ryu et al., 2022; Smaradottir et al., 2020; Teychenne et al., 2017), and only the Brazilian National Health Survey explored the associations between four PA domains and depressive symptoms within the same study population (Werneck et al., 2020).

Affected by socioeconomic level, cultural background, social customs, and other factors, the proportion of different domains of PA varies in different populations. People who have the same total PA could have different compositions of domain-specific PAs. The health effect of PA on depressive symptoms could vary by different domains. PA patterns take all domain-specific PAs into consideration at the same time, and may provide more comprehensive information than specific single activity in relation to health. However, only two studies have investigated PA patterns and risk of depressive symptoms (Chen et al., 2019; Liang et al., 2021), and both studies focused on older adults.

This study aimed to investigate the associations between different domains and patterns of PA and depressive symptoms within a study population including both young and old adults.