People who take regular exercise during their free time are less likely to have symptoms of depression and anxiety, a study of 40,000 Norwegians has found.
But physical activity which is part and parcel of the working day does not have the same effect, it suggests.
Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the researchers said it was probably because there was not the same level of social interaction.
The charity Mind said that exercise and interaction aids our mental health.
Higher levels of social interaction during leisure time were found to be part of the reason for the link.
Depression
Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London teamed up with academics from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the University of Bergen in Norway to conduct the study.
The study found that individuals who took part in regular physical activity – however mild or intense – were less likely to have symptoms of depression. However, this only held true when activity was part of leisure.
The more people engaged in physical activity in their spare time, the less chance they had of being depressed.
Those who were not active in their leisure time were almost twice as likely to suffer symptoms of depression than the most active individuals.
The findings are published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Lead researcher Dr Samuel Harvey said: ”Our study shows that people who engage in regular leisure-time activity of any intensity are less likely to have symptoms of depression. We also found that the context in which activity takes place is vital and that the social benefits associated with exercise, like increased numbers of friends and social support, are more important in understanding how exercise may be linked to improved mental health than any biological markers of fitness.
”This may explain why leisure activity appears to have benefits not seen with physical activity undertaken as part of a working day.”
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A report has shown that most depressed teens who receive treatment appear to recover, but the condition recurs in almost half of adolescent patients and even more often among females.
Major depressive disorder affects approximately 5.9 percent of teen females and 4.6 percent of teen males, according to background information in the article.
John Curry, of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., and colleagues studied 196 adolescents (86 males and 110 females) who participated in the Treatment for Adolescents With Depression Study (TADS).
The teens were randomly assigned to one of four short-term treatment interventions (medication with fluoxetine hydrochloride, cognitive behavioral therapy, a combination of the two or placebo) and followed up for five years.
Almost all participants (96.4 percent) recovered from their initial episode of depression during the follow-up period, including 88.3 percent who recovered within two years. Those who responded to a 12-week treatment session (short-term responders) were more likely to have recovered by two years (96.2 percent vs. 79.1 percent). However, two-year recovery was not associated with any particular type of treatment.
Of the 189 teens who recovered from depression, 88 (46.6 percent) experienced a recurrence.
“Contrary to our hypotheses, neither full response to short-term treatment nor treatment with a combination of fluoxetine and cognitive behavioral therapy reduced the risk of recurrence,” the authors write.
“However, short-term treatment non-responders were more likely to experience recurrence than full and partial responders. Females were significantly more likely to have a recurrence than males.”
Teens who also had an anxiety disorder were more likely to experience recurrence (61.9 percent vs. 42.2 percent of those without anxiety disorders). In addition, participants whose depression returned had higher scores on scales of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
The report has been posted online and will appear in the March 2011 print issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
A new research suggests that a dose of the “blues” could help people overcome depression and other mood disorders.
A team, led by Dr Gilles Vandewalle from the University of Liege in Belgium, found that exposure to blue light boosts activity in the parts of the brain that handle emotions.
They believe the findings could explain why light appears to improve mood in both humans and animals.lue wavelengths within the spectral rainbow that makes up white light appear to be chiefly responsible for the effect, the research shows, reports the Scotsman.
In the experiment, 17 healthy volunteers aged 20 to 26 listened to angry and “neutral” actors’ voices while having their brains scanned.
At the same time, the group of volunteers was also exposed to alternating 40-second periods of blue or green ambient light, separated by 15 to 25 seconds of darkness.
The functional magnetic resonance imaging scans showed that “circuits” in their brains, which dealt with emotions, were more sensitive to shorter, wavelength-blue light.
The findings have been reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.