While there are well-established treatment options for depressed adolescents, these treatments often come with significant costs or drawbacks. Anti-depressants have side effects, including “weight gain, sleep disturbance, and reproductive dysfunction” whereas psychotherapy “is associated with perceived stigma for attending the therapist” (p. 2). By comparison, exercise has been proven to reduce depression in adults in addition to the many physiological benefits of regular exercise.
Prior research on the effects of exercise on adolescent depression has given fewer clear-cut results. The present meta-analysis used a unique approach to overcome issues in prior exercise research, such as including only studies which limited the age-range of patients to 12-18-year-olds and eliminating studies which included co-morbid conditions in addition to depression. The researchers also wanted to identify if a dose-response effect (duration, intensity, and frequency of exercise) is present in the relationship between exercise and depression.
A total of 15 articles of 1331 participants published between 1982 and 2017 were analyzed. All participants had either diagnosed depression or depressive symptoms. The exercise programs used in the studies included either aerobic exercise, aerobic combined with resistance exercise, yoga, or whole-body vibration.
In addition to comparing the effectiveness of exercise between treatment and control groups, this study also made recommendations regarding exercise type, duration, intensity, and length of exercise that can be beneficial for future adolescents suffering from depression. Aerobic exercise and aerobic-plus-resistance exercise were found to significantly reduce depression symptoms. Yoga, and whole-body vibration exercises were not significant.
An interesting difference between adolescents with diagnosed depression and those with depressive symptoms was found in the dose-response connection. Depressed adolescents did better with 30-45 mins of exercise 4 times per week at moderate intensity for 6 weeks. Adolescents with depressive symptoms showed greater improvement with 75-120 minutes of exercise 3 times per week at moderate-to-high intensity for 8 weeks. Thus, adolescents with milder depressive symptoms could tolerate longer-duration sessions than those with diagnosed depression. Not all included studies collected long-term follow-up data, but for those that did so, there were continued benefits of exercise up to the 6-month mark after the study.
Wang, X., Cai, Z. D., Jiang, W. T., Fang, Y. Y., Sun, W. X., & Wang, X. (2022). Systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of exercise on depression in adolescents. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 16(1), 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-022-00453-2
©Jennie Dilworth, Ph.D