40-minute habit that changed woman’s life

It took her months to take the simple steps to start, but once Alicia began this weekly activity. And her fitness - both physical and mental - has never been better.

It wasn’t until everything was going right in Adelaide woman Alicia Hopper’s life, that she realised something was very wrong.

“I was in my late twenties, working in a job I loved as a cancer nurse, I had an amazing bunch of friends and I was engaged to a wonderful man who has since become my husband,” she said.

“On paper, everything was perfect. But all of a sudden, I just couldn’t get off the couch. I couldn’t find hope in anything. I started to withdraw from my friends and as an extroverted person, I didn’t know why.”

Ms Hopper said that during this period she realised she’d felt like this at other times over her life, but had always attributed the low mood to something specific she needed to change.

“I had to confront that it wasn’t about external factors - it was something internal that I had to face,” she said.

She spoke to her GP, who diagnosed her with chronic depression.

At first, there was a lot of shame she needed to process.

“In my work and in my personal life I was always really supportive of people I knew with mental health challenges,” Ms Hopper said. “But when I got the diagnosis I had this real sense of failure and shame about it, which shocked me. It’s why nowadays I take every opportunity to speak about it, because I think the less stigma there is around depression and anxiety and other mental illness, the less people newly diagnosed will experience those feelings.”

Australia is in the grips of a mental health crisis, and people are struggling to know who to turn to, especially our younger generations. Can We Talk? is a News Corp awareness campaign, in partnership with Medibank, equipping Aussies with the skills needed to have the most important conversation of their life.

Ms Hopper’s GP prescribed medication, which she now realises - after a few ups and downs - that she’ll need to take forever.

“I’ve learnt over the years that I need to be on medication, and that my brain just doesn’t work as well without it,” she explains.

“I’ve gone through periods where I’ve thought: ‘I’m feeling so good, I might go off it and see how I am,’ but then life throws me a curveball and I realise I really need it to function at my best. That’s been a learning process too, but it’s another thing I’ve accepted.”

With her medication stabilised, she began to feel a lot better - and wanted to explore other healthy ways to maintain her mental health, or “mental fitness”.

That’s where parkrun Australia comes into the picture.

Alicia Hopper began looking for ways to maintain her mental fitness to complement medical treatment.

It took months to get to parkrun, but once she was into the habit she never looked back.

“I’d started running to try and improve my mental health even further, and to reassure my family I was doing everything to prevent another bad bout,” Ms Hopper said.

“It was really difficult for them to watch me going through it, and I wanted to make sure I stayed healthy. I also had a very active golden retriever, so it began as a way to help get him the exercise he needed.”

Somewhere along the line, someone suggested parkrun, a free, 5km running event held on Saturday mornings across 530 locations around the country.

“It took me about three months to print my barcode and actually go, but once I was there it was incredible. There were people of all ages, shapes, sizes and ability levels. You don’t have to even run - you can walk and chat - there were parents pushing prams, people with dogs, there was even a woman there who still goes to this day, and she gave my dog a treat. So obviously he thought it was the best thing ever as well,” she said.

Ms Hopper said she quickly became “addicted” to parkrun - becoming the organiser of a new location in Adelaide a few years in.

“I just realised, I had this entire community around me that just embraced me every week, rain hail or shine,” she said.

“Over the years I’ve gone through some more dark patches - depression will always be a disease that I battle - but parkrun has been the constant in my life.”

The impact exercise - and the resulting physical fitness - also made Ms Hopper conscious of her mental fitness, and how changes she made could help her keep her mind and mood in shape.

It’s something psychiatrist and Medibank chief medical officer Dr Andrew Wilson says Australians should be more focused on.

“We associate ‘fitness’ with physical fitness because of the strong health and wellbeing benefits. While many of us include regular physical exercise as part of our health routines, we don’t necessarily take regular steps to keep our mental health in good shape,” Dr Wilson said.

“Mental fitness can influence how you act, think and feel, and how you choose to process stress and anxiety. The goal is to create thought patterns and practice daily habits to help experience more positive emotions on a regular basis.

“With a little practice each day, you can help get your mind in great shape.”

The impacts of the exercise and community went beyond physical fitness.

The weekly activity has become ‘the constant in my life’.

Counsellor and clinical psychotherapist Julie Sweet says there is little doubt as to the power of exercise when it comes to managing mental health.

“Regular physical activity helps regulate the body’s stress response by lowering cortisol levels, improves cognitive functioning such as concentration and memory, and boosting mood through the release of endorphins,” she says.

“It also supports restorative sleep, enhances energy levels, and contributes to overall emotional resilience. I believe these benefits make exercise a valuable addition to other therapeutic interventions.”

Sweet says exercising in a group setting not only supports the fundamental human need for connection yet also creates an environment of accountability and support.

“The collective motivation that comes from exercise groups often helps people sustain investment, particularly during times when personal motivation may drop,” she says.

It was a lesson Ms Hopper learned for herself when a major mental health episode in 2016 left her unable to do almost anything else for a period.

“I had a very toxic job, and I think because my mental health had been so good, I perhaps didn’t recognise the warning signs until one morning, I quite literally could not get out of bed to go to work,” she recalls.

“I simply couldn’t do it. I was in complete burnout.”

Over the next few months of recovery, Ms Hopper remembers barely being able to leave the house - except to participate in her weekly parkrun.

“It really gave me the only routine I could stick to, and helped me so much through that time,” she says.

“I never went back to that job, but I sure as hell stuck to parkrun.”

Originally published as 40-minute habit that changed woman’s life