How To Overcome Depression

The NZ Herald reported in September 2007 that the New Zealand government spends yearly NZ$30 million over a million prescriptions for antidepressants. Concerns are raised about the high prescription rate that includes antidepressants prescribed to adolescents and children as young as one year old and less. This is a shocking number in a country of only 4 million people. The fear was expressed that depression awareness campaigns have boosted pharmaceutical sales rather than providing public education about alternative treatment pathways for depression.

So what are the alternative treatments available? Often people who seek help for depression will be advised to exercise. However, people who are depressed find it often really hard to motivate themselves to exercise. This is really unfortunate, because people are usually depressed because their life is depressing and a pill a day does not change depressing life circumstances. As a result you often hear of patients who have been on antidepressants for many years.

What then are the facts about the effectiveness of exercising? A recent research published in the Psychosomatic Medicine Journal Vol. 69(7), September 2007, pages 587-596, found that exercise is just as effective as antidepressants. Indeed, both treatment options showed significant remission of depressive symptoms and an improvement of daily functioning. Interestingly assessments after 4, 6, and 10 months showed that participants of the exercise group had a significantly lower relapse rate than the participants that were treated with antidepressants, and of course less unpleasant side effects.

The research had a supervised exercise group (gym), a home-based exercise group, a group on antidepressant medication, and a group on a placebo (meaning a pill that looked like the antidepressant but had not active ingredients). After 4 months 41% of participants no longer met the diagnostic criteria for depression. A similar percentage of participants improved in all three groups with placebo ranking the lowest with 31%, of the home exercise group 40% of the participants improved, the gym group scored 45%, and 47% of the participants of the group that received medication improved. Thus no particular treatment was able to demonstrate to be superior to the other options. The sad story is that 59% of the participants did not respond to the treatment offered in any significant way.

Therefore, exercise does not seem to be the magic cure. However, exercise seems to appear equally effective than medication. As a bonus: people might benefit from the ‘side-effects’ of exercising such as improved fitness, weight-loss, and improved self-confidence. Not tested in this research has been psychotherapy as a treatment option for depression. Although, older research has shown that the success of psychotherapy treatment is comparable to the success of drug treatment. See the talkingcure-dot-com website for an overview over a vast amount of studies that compare both approaches.

Are you depressed? See for yourself whether exercise will help. The exercise programme in the research mentioned involved three times per week 45 minutes exercise for 16 weeks. Participants spent 10 minutes of walking for warm-up, 30 minutes walking or jogging at a speed that raised their heartbeat up to 70 to 85 % of their maximum heart rate, and 5 minutes cooling down exercises.

When you are depressed and exercising does not help, you might be in that group of people who respond positively to antidepressants. You should ask your doctor for advice. But keep in mind that research (Positive Psychology) has clearly shown that having successful relationships are the best antidote to depression. – Maybe you need to make an extra effort to connect with friends and loved ones … or brush up on your relationship skills. The ball is in your court!