Running away from depression…
Wednesday, November 8, 2023. I’ll continue to publish the most relevant research on anxiety and depression because over 40% of the time, new couples therapy clients have at least one partner who is clinically depressed.
Running? or Antidepressants? Which is better for my depression?
Boy, was I ever annoyed to read that running has roughly the same beneficial effect on mental health as taking antidepressants.
Recent research from Amsterdam explains that the benefits of acquiring the running habit is that it not only alleviates depression, it also leads to better physical conditioning.
On the other hand, taking antidepressants is just as effective in treating depression, but taking antidepressants tends to be correlated with a decline in your overall physical condition.
Here’s the part that they usually leave out because.. it’s kinda depressing.
The disadvantage of the far healthier running habit is that it is wicked hard to maintain: only 18% of humans in the study stopped taking antidepressants, while a whopping 48% stopped running.
How the study was conducted
This was a four month study which presented humans with the choice between jogging as a group or starting a regime of taking antidepressants. In total, 141 people who were given a choice between group running or antidepressants.
Here’s what’s fascinating. We want to do the right thing, really we do! While 45 of the study subjects chose antidepressants at the start of the study, more than 2/3 of the humans (96) chose running.
BTW, the specific commitment to running involved two or three 45-minute sessions per week over almost four months.
Professor Brenda Penninx, study co-author, said:
“This study gave anxious and depressed people a real-life choice, medication or exercise.
Interestingly, the majority opted for exercise, which led to the numbers in the running group being larger than in the medication group.”
The results showed that precisely 44% of the humans in both groups went into remission for their depression and anxiety symptoms.
In other words, they no longer presented as anxious or depressed. Both running, and antidepressants were equally effective.
Professor Penninx elaborated:
“Both interventions helped with the depression to around the same extent.
Antidepressants generally had worse impact on body weight, heart rate variability and blood pressure, whereas running therapy led to improved effect on general fitness and heart rate for instance.
We are currently looking in more detail for effects on biological aging and processes of inflammation.
Running is hard fu*king work…
Just how much resistance is there to running? Around 15% of humans who chose to run in this study, never actually started running. That’s a serious problem for some humans.
Professor Penninx said:
“It is important to say that there is room for both therapies in care for depression.
The study shows that lots of people like the idea of exercising, but it can be difficult to carry this through, even though the benefits are significant.”
Humans may need specific kinds of support to to foster and encourage an exercise habit, said Professor Penninx:
“We found that most people are compliant in taking antidepressants, whereas around half of the running group adhered to the two-times-a-week exercise therapy.
Telling patients to go run is not enough.
Changing physical activity behavior will require adequate supervision and encouragement as we did by implementing exercise therapy in a mental health care institution.”
So, while running is effective, most humans will not run for their lives unless you somehow compel them…
Here’s the hard -noosed truth. Any treatment that is behaviorally-based that humans strongly tend to resist, cannot possibly be an effective, wide-spread solution, unless that resistance is mitigated.
Antidepressants, though, are effective, partly because consuming them requires little effort
Professor Penninx observed:
“Antidepressants are generally safe and effective.
They work for most people. We know that not treating depression at all leads to worse outcomes; so antidepressants are generally a good choice.”
Nevertheless, antidepressants have considerable side-effects, said Professor Penninx:
“Let’s also face potential side effects our treatments can have.
Doctors should be aware of the dysregulation in nervous system activity that certain antidepressants can cause, especially in patients who already have heart problems.
This also provides an argument to seriously consider tapering and discontinuing antidepressants when depressed or anxious episodes have remitted.
In the end, patients are only truly helped when we are improving their mental health without unnecessarily worsening their physical health.”
Final thoughts…
What I deeply appreciate about this study is the pervasive undertone of empathy. I especially appreciate how the resistance to running is the center of the researcher’s curiosity.
I also appreciate how this research invites therapists to explain more deeply the best practices for enduring habit formation. Also, clients benefit when their therapist normalizes the difficulty of establishing a running habit.
I’m grateful for sophisticated research such as this which encourages us to consider how to mitigate resistance when working with the clinically depressed.
Live well, stay kind, and Godspeed.
