The conclusions come from a genetic analysis of almost half a million people.
Dr Karmel Choi, the study’s first author, explained the key result:
“On average, doing more physical activity appears to protect against developing depression.
Any activity appears to be better than none; our rough calculations suggest that replacing sitting with 15 minutes of a heart-pumping activity like running, or with an hour of moderately vigorous activity, is enough to produce the average increase in accelerometer data that was linked to a lower depression risk.”
While more exercise has frequently been linked to lower depression risk, it is hard to determine cause and effect.
The difficulty is that people who are depressed may move around less.
So, does depression cause less exercise or is more exercise the cause of less depression?
To resolve this problem, the new study used a different method based on genetics.
Dr Karmel Choi, the study’s first author, said:
“Using genetic data, we found evidence that higher levels of physical activity may causally reduce risk for depression.
Knowing whether an associated factor actually causes an outcome is important, because we want to invest in preventive strategies that really work.”
The new conclusions are based on data from almost half-a-million people, 91,000 of whom wore wrist bands that measured their physical activity.
The study showed that exercise caused lower depression risk, but depression was not linked to less exercise.
Dr Choi and colleagues will now go on to look at who might benefit from exercise the most:
“We currently are looking at whether and how much physical activity can benefit different at-risk groups, such as people who are genetically vulnerable to depression or those going through stressful situations and hope to develop a better understanding of physical activity to promote resilience to depression.”
The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Choi et al., 2018).
People who feel able to tell others about their problems and who visit more often with friends and family have a markedly lower risk of becoming depressed.
The data, derived from over 100,000 people, assessed modifiable factors that could affect depression risk including sleep, diet, physical activity and social interaction.
Dr Jordan Smoller, study co-author, explained the results:
“Far and away the most prominent of these factors was frequency of confiding in others, but also visits with family and friends, all of which highlighted the important protective effect of social connection and social cohesion.”
Mood regulation means choosing activities that increase mood, like exercise, when feeling low and doing dull activities like housework when spirits are higher.
Some of the best ways of improving mood are being in nature, taking part in sport, engaging with culture, chatting and playing.
Other mood enhancing activities include listening to music, eating, helping others and childcare.
This may explain why nature has a remarkably beneficial effect on a wide range of diseases including depression, ADHD, cancer, diabetes, obesity and many more.
Dr Ming Kuo, who carried out the research, explained how nature helps:
“When we feel completely safe, our body devotes resources to long-term investments that lead to good health outcomes — growing, reproducing, and building the immune system.
When we are in nature in that relaxed state, and our body knows that it’s safe, it invests resources toward the immune system.”
The finding was particularly strong for those who took part in structured school teams.
The finding was particularly strong for those who took part in structured school teams.
Taking part in team sports is linked to a lower risk of depression in boys, research finds.
The study of children aged 9-11 found that both boys and girls who took part in team sports also had greater hippocampal volume.
The hippocampus is an area of the brain critical for memory and other important functions.
The finding was particularly strong for those who took part in structured school teams as opposed to informal games.
Ms Lisa Gorham, the study’s first author, said:
“Our findings are important because they help illuminate the relationships between involvement in sports, volume of a particular brain region and depressive symptoms in kids as young as nine.
We found that involvement in sports, but not non-sport activities such as music or art, is related to greater hippocampal volume in both boys and girls, and is related to reduced depression in boys.”
The study included 4,191 from across the US.
Brain scans revealed the link between team sports and larger hippocampal volume.
Many studies have proven the antidepressant effects of exercise on adults, but this is the first in children.
Ms Gorham said:
“The fact that these relationships were strongest for team or structured sports suggests that there might be something about the combination of exercise and the social support or structure that comes from being on a team that can be useful at preventing or treating depression in young people.
The findings raise intriguing possibilities for new work on preventing and treating depression in children.”
The study was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging (Gorham et al., 2019).
Some depressed patients even experienced dramatic improvements in just a couple of weeks.
Some depressed patients even experienced dramatic improvements in just a couple of weeks.
Electrical brain stimulation produced a marked improvement in depression symptoms in 70 percent of people who took part in a recent study.
Some depressed patients even experienced dramatic improvements in just a couple of weeks.
The painless, non-invasive treatment targets a natural pattern of electrical activity in a specific part of the brain.
Most people in the study reported that their depression symptoms were reduced by at least half after two weeks.
The newer type of brain stimulation used in the study is called ‘transcranial alternating current stimulation’ (tACS).
Dr Flavio Frohlich, study co-author, explained:
“We conducted a small study of 32 people because this sort of approach had never been done before.
Now that we’ve documented how this kind of tACS can reduce depression symptoms, we can fine tune our approach to help many people in a relatively inexpensive, noninvasive way.”
All the people in the study had been diagnosed with major depression.
They were randomly divided into three groups with two of them getting a sham version of the treatment to provide controls.
The electrical brain stimulation lasted 40 minutes and was done on five consecutive days.
It targeted natural electrical oscillations in the brain called ‘alpha waves’.
Alpha waves are more predominant when people close their eyes and dream, or meditate.
Studies have suggested that depression is linked to an imbalance of alpha waves in the right frontal cortex.
Stabilising these waves, the scientists found, caused many people’s depression to lift after two weeks.
However, after four weeks, the effect of the brain stimulation appeared to have worn off.
Dr Frohlich said:
“It’s important to note that this is a first-of-its kind study.
It was unclear what would happen if we treated people several days in a row or what effect we might see weeks later.
So, the fact that we’ve seen such positive results from this study gives me confidence our approach could help many people with depression.”
The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Alexander et al., 2019).
Teaching people to focus on positive emotions helps them deal with stress, new research finds.
People were taught classic positive psychology exercises such as keeping a gratitude journal, recognising positive events each day and doing small acts of kindness.
Together, the training helped reduce people’s anxiety and depression over the six weeks of the study.
The researchers focused on 170 caregivers for people with dementia.
Half were put in a control group, while the rest were encouraged to focus on their positive emotions.
People were taught eight skills:
Practice a small act of kindness each day and recognise the power it has to increase positive emotions.
Set a simple and attainable goal for each day and note down progress.
Savour a positive event through journalling or discussing it with someone.
Spot at least one positive event each day.
List a personal strength and how you have used it recently.
Use mindfulness to pay attention to daily experiences.
Identify a daily stressor and reframe it as a positive event.
Keep a gratitude journal.
Professor Judith Moskowitz, the study’s first author, said:
“The caregivers who learned the skills had less depression, better self-reported physical health, more feelings of happiness and other positive emotions than the control group.”
The results showed that those who learned the positive psychology exercises experienced a 7 percent drop in depression scores and 9 percent drop in anxiety.
This was enough to move people from being moderately depressed to being within the ‘normal’ range.
Professor Moskowitz chose dementia caregivers as the disease is on the rise:
“Nationally we are having a huge increase in informal caregivers.
People are living longer with dementias like Alzheimer’s disease, and their long-term care is falling to family members and friends.
This intervention is one way we can help reduce the stress and burden and enable them to provide better care.”
One participant in the study commented:
“Doing this study helped me look at my life, not as a big neon sign that says, ‘DEMENTIA’ in front of me, but little bitty things like, ‘We’re having a meal with L’s sister, and we’ll have a great visit.’
I’m seeing the trees are green, the wind is blowing.
Yeah, dementia is out there, but I’ve kind of unplugged the neon sign and scaled down the size of the letters.”
