1.5 times the treatment effect such as walking, weight lifting, Pilates… mid-term focus
Physical activity such as exercise has been shown to have a much higher therapeutic effect than drugs in relieving mental symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
This is the result of a study at the University of South Australia, Australia. The research team analyzed data from 1039 clinical trial papers and 97 paper evaluations (128,119 participants). As a result, physical activity such as exercise was found to be about 1.5 times more effective than drugs in relieving mental symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and anguish.
In particular, intensive exercise for less than 12 weeks was most effective in reducing various mental symptoms and accelerated the improvement effect. The research team said, “In addition to patients with mental symptoms such as depression, exercise showed a great effect on healthy men and women, pregnant and postpartum women, kidney disease patients, and people infected with the immunodeficiency virus (HIV).”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 8 people worldwide (970 million people) suffers from some form of mental illness. Mental health deterioration costs the global economy an estimated $2.5 trillion each year, and that figure will soar to $6 trillion by 2030, health experts predict.
Dr. Ben Singh, lead author of the study, said, “It is regrettable that physical activity, such as exercise, is not widely adopted as a first-line treatment despite many studies showing that it helps improve mental health.” In many cases, a combination of exercise therapy and medication is effective in treating depression and the like.
According to the results of the study, as the intensity of exercise increased, the improvement effect of depression and anxiety increased. Rather than setting the exercise period too long, it was more effective to exercise intensively by setting a short-term or mid-term period. All types of exercise and physical activity, including aerobic exercise such as walking, weight lifting, Pilates, and yoga, were analyzed to be beneficial. The research team emphasized, “The important point is that the time it takes for exercise to bring about positive changes in mental health is relatively short.”
The results of this study (Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: an overview of systematic reviews) were published in the ≪British Journal of Sports Medicine≫ and introduced by the American Society for the Advancement of Science portal ‘Eureka Alert’ .
