The Role of Exercise in Preventing and Treating Depression

Depressive disorders, major depressive disorders and subsyndromal / subthreshold depression have a worldwide prevalence of up to 20%. These conditions are a major cause of disability, days lost at work and lead to poorer physical health and quality of life. Typically, these conditions are treated either pharmacologically or psychologically.

While these treatments can be effective, they do not work for everyone and novel, newer or different treatments should be searched out. Why not something like exercise?

Drs. Schuch and Stubbs do an excellent job of reviewing the literature and showing us that not only do higher levels of physical activity and exercise confer a protective effect against depression but also shown to reduce depressive symptoms. Their paper was selected as the Current Sports Medicine Reports paper of 2019. Check it out here.

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