subject: Does Exercise Really Help In Beating Depression [print this page] A new study, conducted by proper university academics, sufficiently large-scale, randomised and controlled, has confounded the experience of countless depression sufferers. The conclusion: all that exercise, the running, cycling, swimming, walking that you did to help you through the dark days of an illness that no one really understands was basically of no benefit to your state of mind. In short, exercise doesn't help.
While research published this week says that many people who have lived with depression feel the benefits of a trip to the gym, or even a spot of gardening.
The research, published in the British Medical Journal, seems robust. More than 360 patients aged 18-69, who had recently presented with depression, were selected. Half were offered standard care, the other half received additional "facilitated physical activity intervention" an exercise coach who devised and monitored a programme for them. Patients were randomly divided so that neither group was skewed in terms of fitness levels.
The outcome was surprising. Exeter University professor John Campbell put it succinctly: "This carefully designed research study has shown that exercise does not appear to be effective in treating depression."
So how to reconcile the anecdotal evidence with the empirical science? Perhaps both are slightly mistaken. We depressives are not to be trusted when we declare what is good for us. Often there are too many variables changing to know which is the one that is helping. It seems to make sense that exercise helps, but perhaps that's a virtuous circle. We think it's going to work, so it does.
As for the scientists, one thing about their methodology strikes us as slightly awry, and that is the notion of "facilitated physical activity intervention". Being told to exercise might have a very different psychological effect to doing it autonomously. One depression sufferer, John Lake, told recently that he had done the London marathon and triathlon. He felt so great, he came off his antidepressants. "That's why I found the running was great. It was taking back control from the medicine regaining the fresh feeling as materials going through a dryer machine." There's something in that notion of empowerment that can be very nourishing to someone who has spent months, years even, hopelessly reliant on others.
