Perceived stress can affect people's lifestyle behaviours and self-rated health. A balanced, healthy lifestyle can alleviate experiences of stress. For clinicians to use evidence-based and theory-based knowledge in health dialogues with people with non-communicable diseases, and in order to develop more effective behavioural counselling, more knowledge is needed. Hence, this study aimed to examine the mediating role of sedentary behaviour, daily physical activity, physical exercise, and dietary habits on the association between perceived stress and self-rated health in people with or without one to four self-reported non-communicable diseases (myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, diabetes). The study used a cross-sectional design. Responses from in total 10,583 individuals were collected in 2016 and 2019 by a self-report questionnaire. A series of simple and multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the mediating effects of healthy lifestyle behaviours on the association between perceived stress and self-rated health. The results show that the investigated healthy lifestyle behaviours partly mediated the association between perceived stress and self-rated health in people with no diagnosis, and in people with one or two diagnoses. It can be concluded that healthy lifestyle behaviours could probably be targeted in relation to the number of noncommunicable diseases that the individuals have.
Keywords: adults; diet; exercise; health; health behaviour; healthy; healthy lifestyle; mediation analysis; middle-aged; noncommunicable diseases; psychological; sedentary behaviour; stress.