Scientists are mapping the complex web of causes of major depressive disorder.
People felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.
People felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.
Lifting weights and strength training help to reduce depression, a review of the research finds.
Strength training can substantially improve people’s symptoms even for those with moderate depression and those who do not train that often.
In fact, strength training, including weight-lifting, is particularly effective for people who have more severe depression symptoms.
It also didn’t matter if people ‘bulked up’ or not — there was no link between having more muscle and feeling better.
The main thing was just to do the workout.
After strength training or weight-lifting, people felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.
The studies cannot tell us why strength training is beneficial, but it may be because it increases blood flow to the brain.
Previous studies have also shown that weight-lifting reduces anxiety symptoms.
Mr Brett Gordon, the study’s first author, said:
“Interestingly, larger improvements were found among adults with depressive symptoms indicative of mild-to-moderate depression compared to adults without such scores, suggesting RET may be particularly effective for those with greater depressive symptoms.”
The conclusions come from a review of 33 separate studies involving 1,877 people.
The studies included both the depressed and nondepressed.
The results showed it didn’t matter if people went to the gym five times a week or just twice a week, or how many repetitions they completed — the benefits were roughly the same.
All that really mattered was showing up and completing the workout.
The study’s authors conclude:
“Resistance exercise training significantly reduced depressive symptoms among adults regardless of health status, total prescribed volume of RET, or significant improvements in strength.”
Weight training has similar benefits to mental health to those provided by aerobic exercise, like jogging.
This is quite apart from its physiological benefits, such as increasing bone strength and preventing other chronic conditions.
The authors recommend working out at least twice a week and performing around 10 repetitions of 10 different strength-building exercises.
The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Gordon et al., 2018).
Changing patterns of breathing improves mental health, concentration and memory.
Changing patterns of breathing improves mental health, concentration and memory.
Deep breathing can help reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety.
It also has the power to increase concentration and memory.
Controlled yogic breathing has even been shown to help with severe depression.
But, it has to be done right.
Diaphragmatic breathing — colloquially known as deep breathing — involves contracting the muscles underneath the lungs.
Sometimes it is called ‘belly breathing’ because it feels like breathing from the belly.
In contrast, ‘chest breathing’ — using the muscles around the upper body — is less efficient.
Dr Melanis Rivera, a clinical psychologist who works at a student counselling centre, said:
“When you breathe with your upper chest, upper lungs, upper body, what happens is you are taking in less oxygen which is vital to your body and organs.”
This sort of shallow breathing is linked to anxiety, fatigue and muscle tension.
It can also lead to headaches and panic attacks.
Belly breathing is best done by breathing in steadily for four seconds from the diaphragm, then exhaling for six seconds.
Dr Nathaly Shoua-Desmarais, a clinical psychologist and biofeedback specialist, said:
“The misconception is the longer you suck in air the better, but it’s the longer exhalation that provides the most benefit.”
While it might seem odd that we need to train ourselves to breathe properly, Dr Shoua-Desmarais said:
“Babies use diaphragmatic breathing.
Somewhere along the way we develop bad habits that develop into thoracic breathing.”
Retraining ourselves to do something so natural, though, can prove difficult.
It is best to start with a 5-minute routine at first, said Dr Rivera:
“If you’ve been chest breathing for a good portion of your life and you suddenly tell your body, hey, let’s stretch out these lungs, you could feel dizzy or get a headache, even hyperventilate.”
Very common vitamin deficiency linked to higher levels of depression.
Very common vitamin deficiency linked to higher levels of depression.
Almost half of young women have insufficient vitamin D levels, which is linked to depression.
The study also found that over one-third of young women had signs of clinical depression.
Dr David Kerr, the psychologist who led the study, said:
“Depression has multiple, powerful causes and if vitamin D is part of the picture, it is just a small part.
But given how many people are affected by depression, any little inroad we can find could have an important impact on public health.”
While many suspect a link between the vitamin deficiency and depression, studies have not often confirmed it.
Dr Kerr continued:
“The new study was prompted in part because there is a widely held belief that vitamin D and depression are connected, but there is not actually much scientific research out there to support the belief.
I think people hear that vitamin D and depression can change with the seasons, so it is natural for them to assume the two are connected.”
To test the link researchers recruited 185 female college students between the ages of 18-25.
The study focused on women because they are almost twice as likely to suffer from depression.
Their vitamin D levels were measured from their blood.
Depression symptoms were checked every week for five weeks.
The results showed that women of colour had particularly high vitamin deficiency for vitamin D, with 61% being deficient.
This compared to low vitamin D levels in 35% of other women.
Vitamin D is important for both mental and physical health.
Physically, it has been linked to better bone health, muscle function, and cardiovascular health.
Vitamin D is created in the body with exposure to sunlight.
It is also found in some foods, like milk, which is fortified with it.
Dr Kerr concluded:
“Vitamin D supplements are inexpensive and readily available.
They certainly shouldn’t be considered as alternatives to the treatments known to be effective for depression, but they are good for overall health.”
The vitamin deficiency study is published in the journal Psychiatry Research (Kerr et al., 2015)
Breakfast timing also predicts how long older adults live.
The trait is linked to feeling pure and in touch with yourself.
The trait is linked to feeling pure and in touch with yourself.
Believing in free will makes you feel more authentic and pure.
Free will is the belief that we have the power to make our own choices and we are not ruled by fate.
Feeling closer to your true self has a number of benefits, including lower depression and anxiety.
A sense of free will also helps boost people’s self-esteem and increases their sense of meaning in life.
Dr Elizabeth Seto, the study’s first author, said:
“Whether you agree that we have free will or that we are overpowered by social influence or other forms of determinism, the belief in free will has truly important consequences.”
For the study, almost 300 people were split into two groups.
One group wrote about experiences that reflected free will, while the other wrote about experiences that lacked it.
The results showed that a lack of free will was linked to less self-awareness and even self-alienation.
People who wrote about free will, though, felt more in touch with themselves.
Dr Seto said:
“Our findings suggest that part of being who you are is experiencing a sense of agency and feeling like you are in control over the actions and outcomes in your life.
If people are able to experience these feelings, they can become closer to their true or core self.”
In a subsequence study, people whose sense of free will was boosted, reported feeling more authentic about making a donation to charity.
Dr Seto said:
“When we experience or have low belief in free will and feel ‘out of touch’ with who we are, we may behave without a sense of morality.
This is particularly important if we have a goal to improve the quality of life for individuals and the society at large.”
The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science (Seto & Hicks, 2016).
The therapy reduces symptoms of depression in those that have not responded to antidepressants, talking therapies or other interventions.
Long-term depression needs a new type of treatment.
Long-term depression needs a new type of treatment.
Persistent depression changes the brain over the years.
The longer people are depressed without receiving treatment, the more their brains become inflamed.
The study suggests that people who have been depressed for a long time need a different type of treatment — one that unfortunately doesn’t yet exist.
Despite this, people with depression are usually treated in the same way, no matter how long they have been suffering.
The findings come from the same team that was the first to confirm that the brain does indeed become inflamed in clinical depression.
Dr Jeff Meyer, who led the study, explained that inflammation has also been linked to neurodegenerative diseases:
“Greater inflammation in the brain is a common response with degenerative brain diseases as they progress, such as with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.”
The study found that people who have experienced depression for over 10 years without treatment have higher levels of a translocator protein that is a marker of depression.
Unfortunately, current treatments do not target brain inflammation, although they are being developed.
Depression also follows different courses.
Some people’s depression comes and goes over the years, while others have more continuous, persistent periods of depression.
There is relatively little evidence about how to treat people who have been depressed for long periods of time or what happens in their brains.
The study was published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry (Setiawan et al., 2018).
Turns out the sense of time passing may be yet another hidden symptom of depression.
Higher self-esteem from a common creative therapy that also helps reduce depression.
Higher self-esteem from a common creative therapy that also helps reduce depression.
Music therapy can reduce depression in young people with behaviour problems, research finds.
Music therapy also increased self-esteem compared to those who received the usual treatment without the therapy.
The conclusions come from the largest every study of its kind.
It involved 251 children, only half of whom were given music therapy.
The music therapy itself included things like the therapist asking children to describe how they felt by playing a tune.
All the children in the study were being treated for behavioural, emotional or developmental problems.
The results showed that those who received the music therapy had higher self-esteem and reduced depression in comparison to those that had care as usual.
Professor Sam Porter, who led the study, said:
“This study is hugely significant in terms of determining effective treatments for children and young people with behavioural problems and mental health needs.
The findings contained in our report should be considered by healthcare providers and commissioners when making decisions about the sort of care for young people that they wish to support.”
Ciara Reilly, Chief Executive of Every Day Harmony, a music therapy charity, said:
“Music therapy has often been used with children and young people with particular mental health needs, but this is the first time its effectiveness has been shown by a definitive randomised controlled trail in a clinical setting.
The findings are dramatic and underscore the need for music therapy to be made available as a mainstream treatment option.
For a long time we have relied on anecdotal evidence and small-scale research findings about how well music therapy works.
Now we have robust clinical evidence to show its beneficial effects.”
The study was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, (Porter et al., 2016).
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