Tuesday February 7, 2012
If you have a chronic illness and are battling depression, exercise may be just what you need to lift your mood, according to University of Alabama, Birmingham researchers.
For the study, Matthew Herring and his team examined 90 previous studies of 10,500 sedentary patients with chronic illness. Each study included people who had been randomly assigned to either an exercise group or a non-exercise group. In addition, the study participants had had their depression levels measured both before and after exercise.
The researchers found that those who engaged in exercise - which included such as activities as jogging, cycling and resistance training - had a 22% reduction in their depression symptoms. Those who exercised either at least 150 minutes at a moderate intensity or at least 75 minutes at a vigorous intensity had even greater improvements. The patients who received the greatest benefit from exercise were those who had mild to moderate depression and for whom exercise improved their ability to function.
Based upon these results, Herring suggests that exercise can be recommended as a potential low-risk treatment for depression in those suffering from chronic illness.
The article was published in January 23, 2012 issue of Archives of General Medicine.
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Tuesday February 7, 2012
Do you believe that the symptoms you are experiencing could be caused by depression? Our online depression screening tool is quick, easy and completely confidential.
Monday January 30, 2012
Newly published research indicates that working too many overtime hours could make you more prone to developing depression.
The study, which included about 2,000 British government employees, found that those who worked 11 or more hours per day were more than twice as likely to develop depression as those who worked a normal seven or eight hour day.
The authors noted that because the study included only civil servants it is not possible to determine from the data whether this same effect would apply for blue collar jobs.
It is not known how long work hours might influence depression risk, but factors such as work-family conflict, difficulty in relaxing after hours and chronically high levels of stress hormones could play a role.
The study was published online on Jan. 25, 2012 in the journal PLoS ONE
Wednesday January 25, 2012
The American Psychiatric Association is in the process of revising its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) , a handbook used by clinicians when making diagnoses of conditions such as depression, and some believe it may be going too far.
A new report by researchers at Columbia and New York universities argues that the newly proposed definition of depression, which includes grief after the loss of a loved one under the umbrella of depression, is opening the door for false-positive diagnosis of depression and the unnecessary treatment of people who are simply going through the normal process of grieving.
Other experts, however, argue that clinical depression can and often does occur as a result of grief. These proponents of the proposed changes feel that changing the criteria for a depression diagnosis will aid these people in getting the help that they need.
The 5th edition of the DSM, which is the first major update the manual has undergone since 1994, is due to be published in May 2013.
If you would like to learn more about the proposed changes, please visit http://www.dsm5.org/.
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