Staying Fit: Combating Depression & Anxiety
Exercise has often been observed as an effective approach in amending mental health difficulties among problems in many other domains of life. As a means of furthering our understanding of the benefits of exercise, researchers explored its usefulness as a way to counter depression and anxiety, two increasingly prevalent mental health illnesses.
To establish the efficacy of exercise upon this specific clinical population, researchers opted for the typical path of comparing it with a proven method - transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural group therapy, so as to see how this promising approach can measure up to what has been shown to work.
A commonly used exercise protocol in research was utilized - one that focuses specifically on aerobic & strength exercises. To test out a treatment mechanism theorized to play a role in exercise, researchers included learning phases where participants learned new training techniques each week, so as to increase self-efficacy and consequently, decrease depressive symptoms.
Transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural group therapy (TCBGT) addresses the common elements found within varied mental health disorders and targets them in a coordinated effort to ameliorate symptoms. In contrast, the typical form of cognitive behavioural therapy focuses singularly on a certain disorder.
All the while, researchers documented the trajectory of depression and anxiety symptoms via questionnaires administered throughout the study.
Improvements were evident following the exercise protocol, in that questionnaire results reflected significantly lowered levels of depression especially. Anxiety levels didn’t have markedly high decreases, but some could be detected as a trend. Overall, the fact that exercise positively impacted both depressive and anxiety symptoms highlights it as a potent transdiagnostic method that can be as effective as TCBGT.
Consequently when comparing exercise with TCBGT, the researchers found exercise was the stronger treatment method with evidently more improvement in symptoms.
Notably, relapse rates were low, as participants continued on their healthy habits of exercise. This runs counter to the relapse rates typically seen with medical treatments.
From these results, future directives include focusing on the differential effects of strength training and aerobic exercise. Perhaps each form has its own unique impacts on depression and anxiety, and would make for interesting exploration down the road. Also, as the study had made an indirect comparison with TCBGT by using another study’s results, a randomized controlled trial where both treatments are directly tested, is certainly warranted.
Source:
Ólafsdóttir, K. B., Kristjánsdóttir, H., & Saavedra, J. M. (2018). Effects of exercise on depression and anxiety. A comparison to transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy. Community mental health journal, 54(6), 855-859.
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