Category: Depression

Eight exercise for developing serenity and calm.

Teaching people to focus on positive emotions helps them deal with stress, new research finds.

People were taught classic positive psychology exercises such as keeping a gratitude journal, recognising positive events each day and doing small acts of kindness.

Together, the training helped reduce people’s anxiety and depression over the six weeks of the study.

The researchers focused on 170 caregivers for people with dementia.

Half were put in a control group, while the rest were encouraged to focus on their positive emotions.

People were taught eight skills:

1. Practice a small act of kindness each day and recognise the power it has to increase positive emotions.
2. Set a simple and attainable goal for each day and note down progress.
3. Savour a positive event through journalling or discussing it with someone.
4. Spot at least one positive event each day.
5. List a personal strength and how you have used it recently.
6. Use mindfulness to pay attention to daily experiences.
7. Identify a daily stressor and reframe it as a positive event.
8. Keep a gratitude journal.

Professor Judith Moskowitz, the study’s first author, said:

“The caregivers who learned the skills had less depression, better self-reported physical health, more feelings of happiness and other positive emotions than the control group.”

The results showed that those who learned the positive psychology exercises experienced a 7 percent drop in depression scores and 9 percent drop in anxiety.

This was enough to move people from being moderately depressed to being within the ‘normal’ range.

Professor Moskowitz chose dementia caregivers as the disease is on the rise:

“Nationally we are having a huge increase in informal caregivers.

People are living longer with dementias like Alzheimer’s disease, and their long-term care is falling to family members and friends.

This intervention is one way we can help reduce the stress and burden and enable them to provide better care.”

One participant in the study commented:

“Doing this study helped me look at my life, not as a big neon sign that says, ‘DEMENTIA’ in front of me, but little bitty things like, ‘We’re having a meal with L’s sister, and we’ll have a great visit.’

I’m seeing the trees are green, the wind is blowing.

Yeah, dementia is out there, but I’ve kind of unplugged the neon sign and scaled down the size of the letters.”

The study was published in the journal Health Psychology (Moskowitz et al., 2019).

The symptom occurs in 50 percent of people with depression.

Physical pain is a surprisingly common sign of depression, research reveals.

Symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, dizziness, muscle and leg pain are present in over half of people with depression.

Indeed, the physical symptoms of depression are nearly as common as the emotional ones, such as moodiness, lack of motivation and tiredness.

Even after successful treatment with antidepressants, the physical symptoms can linger after the emotional ones have improved.

Professor Kurt Kroenke, who led the study, said:

“Depression is a risk factor for symptoms of pain.

The most reports of pain – such as muscle pain, headaches, leg pain – are two or three times more common in people with depression.”

The conclusions come from a study of 573 depressed people visiting 37 different clinics in the US.

The results revealed that common antidepressants were less effective when the physical symptoms were more severe.

In one-third of patients, the physical symptoms lasted longer than the emotional ones.

Professor Kroenke said:

“Physical symptoms may not respond to common antidepressant treatment as much as the emotional symptoms.

Even though the physical symptoms may be related to or aggravated by the depression, they can linger longer than the emotional symptoms.”

Professor Kroenke continued:

“While physical symptoms showed, on average, some improvement with antidepressant treatment, the improvement was typically less than was reported for emotional symptoms.

Most of the improvement for the physical symptoms occurred within the first month of treatment, while the emotional symptoms continued to improve over a nine-month period.”

The study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (Greco et al., 2004).

Avoiding antidepressants has its benefits, says psychiatrist Professor Madhukar Trivedi.

Exercise and psychotherapy are often better than antidepressants for treating moderate depression, a depression expert argues.

Exercise helps to reduce inflammation in the body, which lowers depression and heart disease risk.

While exercise can be difficult to maintain when feeling hopeless, there are ways to combat this.

Professor Madhukar Trivedi, a psychiatrist and co-author of a study on depression and exercise, said:

“Maintaining a healthy dose of exercise is difficult, but it can be done.

It just requires more effort and addressing unique barriers to regular exercise.”

Professor Trivedi has some recommendations for depressed patients:

• Exercise at the same time each day, but don’t worry if you have to skip a day or two.
• Log your progress somewhere.
• Change exercises to keep them interesting.
• Take a friend along.
• Get someone to hold you accountable for doing the exercise.

Avoiding antidepressants has its benefits, said Dr Trivedi:

“There is value to not starting a medication if it’s not needed.

Being active and getting psychotherapy are sometimes the best prescription, especially in younger patients who don’t have severe depression.”

Exercise may also be best for people with chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes and kidney disease.

Fitness is midlife reduces depression risk

The study included almost 18,000 people who were tracked from middle age onwards.

The results showed that people who maintain good fitness levels in midlife are at a much lower risk of depression.

Those with higher levels of fitness were also much less likely to die from heart disease.

The results are also relevant to younger people, said Professor Trivedi:

“This is the age where we typically see physical activity drop off because they’re not involved in school activities and sports.

The earlier you maintain fitness, the better chance of preventing depression, which in the long run will help lower the risk of heart disease.”

The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry (Willis et al., 2018).