A team led from the University of Queensland pulled together every randomized trial they could find that tested exercise against other depression treatments, aiming to settle which types of activity actually worked and how they compared to standard care.
The analysis combined 218 trials covering 14,170 participants with depression, comparing walking, jogging, yoga, strength training, and other activities against usual care, psychotherapy, and antidepressant medication. Walking or jogging and yoga each produced moderate drops in symptoms, similar to cognitive behavioral therapy and larger than the small effect estimated for SSRI antidepressants.
Strength training performed similarly well and was especially well tolerated, and benefits generally grew with exercise intensity. The authors rated overall confidence in the evidence as low, since many of the underlying trials were small or not rigorously blinded, with only one trial meeting the strictest bias criteria; they called for larger, better-designed trials rather than treating the comparison as final.
Read the original study
Movement held its own, trial after trial.
Source
- Noetel, M., Sanders, T., Gallardo-Gómez, D., Taylor, P., Del Pozo Cruz, B., van den Hoek, D., Smith, J. J., Mahoney, J., Spathis, J., Moresi, M., Pagano, R., Pagano, L., Vasconcellos, R., Arnott, H., Varley, B., Parker, P., Biddle, S., & Lonsdale, C. (2024). Effect of exercise for depression: systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 384, e075847. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-075847