Depression and Exercise

[Name of the institute]

Depression and Exercise

Introduction

The 21st century has brought vast improvements and convenience in our lives, but it also had certain drastic effects and consequences. The hustle and bustle and fast-pace nature of monotonous work; without adequate attention towards family life and other recreational habits have left mankind to deal with depression. Depression is a rapidly growing dilemma for the global civilization; especially for the UK society, where increased social isolation and shattered family structures are devastating the situation. Depressed individuals often resort to self help medications, leaning to unauthorized drug usage, including anti-depressants and sleeping pills.

The situation is further marginalized to dangerous consequences; when the individual starts consuming various drugs and alcohol and also reverts to extreme alternatives, such as self-annihilation, suicide and also fatally harming other individuals. The aim of this research paper is to critically appraise a recent scientific or health topic published in The Guardian newspaper title “Exercise doesn't help depression, study concludes” (The Guardian, 2012). The paper also attempts to employ appropriate critical appraisal tool, while commenting on the research the report was based on. The way the newspapers have reported the issue will also be analysed in order to determine its possible impacts upon the health of general public.

Background

According to The Guardian, the “exercise doesn't help depression.” The paper said the patients suffering from depression and are advised to engage in physical exercise by their physicians demonstrate no improvement over the patients who receive only the standard care (The Guardian, 2012). There is a variety of treatments currently recommended by the National Health Service (NHS), and exercise is one of the highly recommended among those recommendations. Many patients are advised to undergo a course of physical exercise as an alternative treatment to taking antidepressant therapy or medication. Despite what has been suggested by many news headlines, it is a fact that there has been no attempt by the research team, who conducted the said research, to re-examine the possible effects of exercise on the patients suffering from varying degrees of depression. Instead, the research was mainly focussed upon the question of whether exercise suggested to depressed people proved effective (Chalder, et al. 2012).

The research study was conducted upon 361 individuals, who were selected randomly. Those individuals were then advised to opt either for a standard care procedure normally employed for the treatment of depression to go for standard treatment with additional advice on physical exercise. It should be noted here that standards procedure for treatment of depression also includes physical activity in addition to therapy and medication, implying that all the patients are advised to be involved in some sort of physical activity, but some of them had received greater encouragement to do so.

In its findings, the research revealed that although this encourage activity had resulted in increased physical activity for some patients but it has found no improvement in terms of reduced symptoms of depression as compare to those patients who received only standard care. For many, the findings ...