Re:The Most Popular Drug in America Is an Antipsychotic
by chiaro on Saturday November 15, 2014 @09:12PM
(#8613271)
Paper: The antidepressive effects of exercise: a meta-analysis of randomized trials.
Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19453207
From the abstract:
> ...the current meta-analysis examines the effects of exercise on depressive symptoms in 58 randomized trials (n = 2982). An overall effect size of -0.80 indicates participants in the exercise treatment had significantly lower depression scores than those receiving the control treatment. This frac34; SD advantage represents level 1, Grade A evidence for the effects of exercise upon depression.
Re:The Most Popular Drug in America Is an Antipsychotic
by Retric on Saturday November 15, 2014 @06:52PM
(#8613006)
These are all rather small trials which would require a fairly large effect to be noticeable.
1191 total from 16 studies of children and
2336 from 39 studies for adults.
Note: A single stuidy of 200 people is generally better than 10 studies of 50 people because you can't combine raw data from different studies. And treatments for mental issues are generally only useful for sub populations.
Re:The Most Popular Drug in America Is an Antipsychotic
by yid on Saturday November 15, 2014 @08:35PM
(#8613198)
You absolutely can combine results from different studies, look up meta-analysis.
Re:The Most Popular Drug in America Is an Antipsychotic
by spiritplumber on Saturday November 15, 2014 @09:06PM
(#8613263)
http://xkcd.com/1447/ However, don't overdo it!
There is very little benefit from exercise for people who have depression.
Children and adolescents: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004691...
Adults: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004366...
Exercise is better than a placebo, if the trial is low quality. Once you get better quality trials the benefit is less significant.
There's some evidence that exercise might build resilience against depression in people currently not depressed.