Researchers of a new study suggested that more information was required to fully understand the benefits of exercising on depression.
Previous studies have established that exercise offers some benefits to people with depression. However, researchers of a new study suggest that more information and further studies are required to fully understand the benefits of exercise on depression as well as to deduce a concise link between the two.
For the new study, researchers analyzed the findings of 39 smaller studies that looked at the effect of exercise on depression. Researchers found that exercising did indeed have a moderate effect on depression. However, on a closer analysis they found that most of these studies weren't conducted in a very reliable manner. Researchers found that while exercise was as effective as psychological therapy or taking antidepressants, these findings were based on only a few, small, low quality trials.
"Our review suggested that exercise might have a moderate effect on depression," said one of the authors of the review, Gillian Mead of the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, UK. "We can't tell from currently available evidence which kinds of exercise regimes are most effective or whether the benefits continue after a patient stops their exercise program."
"The evidence about whether exercise for depression improves quality of life is inconclusive," the authors wrote. "Further larger trials are needed to find out whether exercise is as effective as antidepressants or psychological treatments."
Statistics show that one in every four Americans, accounting for 26.2 percent of the country's population, suffer from mental disorders, depression being the most common disorder. Major Depressive Disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for ages 15-44, affecting approximately 14.8 million American adults.
