Middle-aged adults benefit most from this lifestyle tweak.
Increased intake of this vitamin is particularly important for reducing depression risk.
Most people in the study improved more from this diet than is usual for even counselling and medication.
The type of people who are more sensitive to negative emotions.
The type of people who are more sensitive to negative emotions.
People who are more open to experience are at higher risk of depression.
People who are open to experience are more likely to be imaginative, sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.
In particular, people who are into art and in touch with their emotions are more likely to experience depression.
It may be because artistic people are more sensitive.
The conclusion comes from a study of 143 people who were given tests of personality, focusing on the personality trait of openness to experience:
“Open individuals exhibit an increased awareness of, and receptiveness to, their feelings, thoughts, and impulses, as well as a need for variety, or a recurrent need to enlarge and examine experience.”
Some people in the study had never been depressed, some were depressed in the past and the remainder were currently experiencing depression.
The authors explained the results:
“Depressed participants (both current and past) scored significantly higher than nondepressed participants on the broad factor of Openness, as well as on both Openness to Aesthetics and Openness to Feelings.”
Sensitivity to the arts is probably linked to sensitivity to negative emotions, the authors write:
“It seems more likely that individuals who are attuned to beauty and the arts might be more sensitive, in general, and might therefore be more sensitive to, and affected by, negative events and stimuli.”
An appreciation of art and the experience of depression may be strongly linked:
“…the experience of depression may lead to an existential ”reexamination of the purpose of living,” and consequently bring the depressed individual “in touch with the mystery that lies at the heart of ‘tragic and timeless’ art”
Similarly, Ludwig (1994) suggested that the experience of depression (as well as other emotional problems) serves to fuel the writers “motivation for expression, . . . providing them with the basic ingredients for their art’.”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality Assessment (Wolfenstein & Trull, 1997).
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People felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.
People felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.
Lifting weights and strength training help to reduce depression, a review of the research finds.
Strength training can substantially improve people’s symptoms even for those with moderate depression and those who do not train that often.
In fact, strength training, including weight-lifting, is particularly effective for people who have more severe depression symptoms.
It also didn’t matter if people ‘bulked up’ or not — there was no link between having more muscle and feeling better.
The main thing was just to do the workout.
After strength training or weight-lifting, people felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.
The studies cannot tell us why strength training is beneficial, but it may be because it increases blood flow to the brain.
Previous studies have also shown that weight-lifting reduces anxiety symptoms.
Mr Brett Gordon, the study’s first author, said:
“Interestingly, larger improvements were found among adults with depressive symptoms indicative of mild-to-moderate depression compared to adults without such scores, suggesting RET may be particularly effective for those with greater depressive symptoms.”
The conclusions come from a review of 33 separate studies involving 1,877 people.
The studies included both the depressed and nondepressed.
The results showed it didn’t matter if people went to the gym five times a week or just twice a week, or how many repetitions they completed — the benefits were roughly the same.
All that really mattered was showing up and completing the workout.
The study’s authors conclude:
“Resistance exercise training significantly reduced depressive symptoms among adults regardless of health status, total prescribed volume of RET, or significant improvements in strength.”
Weight training has similar benefits to mental health to those provided by aerobic exercise, like jogging.
This is quite apart from its physiological benefits, such as increasing bone strength and preventing other chronic conditions.
The authors recommend working out at least twice a week and performing around 10 repetitions of 10 different strength-building exercises.
The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Gordon et al., 2018).
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