Exercise against depression
Nobody likes to be sad, but there are times when this emotional state can not be avoided. In fact, there are situations in which even this feeling goes further and ends up causing people in such serious problems as, for example, depression. A situation that can plunge the individual into a well from which it is very difficult to leave.
But precisely this is what you have to do in these situations: go out, leave home and start practicing. So says one American Journal of Psychiatry where people are encouraged with depression to abandon a sedentary lifestyle and get going to solve their problem. An advice also addressed to the relatives of these individuals.
It even helps prevent
In order to analyze the influence of exercise on people's mental health, the researchers analyzed during a period of 11 years to a group of almost 34,000 participants who showed no symptoms of suffering from any mental disorder. All of them had to report periodically on the periodicity with which they exercised, type and intensity of these activities.
At the same time they had to undergo an examination to review possible mental health problems and answer some questionnaires with this same purpose. Once the two results were shared, it was found that the 12% of cases of depression could have been avoided if these people had done one hour of weekly exercise.
On the contrary, the research also showed that those people who did not perform any type of physical activity had a 44% more likely to develop a depression, or other type of disorder compared to those who performed between one and two hours a week.
Living with depression
Not only should a depressed family member be encouraged to go out on the street to exercise. Many other aspects have to be taken into account in order to deal with this relative and help him as much as possible:
- Understand how depression works and that the reactions and changes that occur are not by the will of the person, but effects of depression.
- Do not reinforce the complaints of people with depression or their negative thoughts, do not pay too much attention to depressive behaviors to not feed their negative view of things.
- Control your own anger. If the person with depression has not responded as expected, we must avoid emotionally exploding and only increase the feeling of uselessness of the person making him feel worse.
- Propose activities taking into account that the depressed person will not be very willing to perform them. They must be activities that do not require much effort, start with small things like a little walk in the park, go out and buy clothes, etc.
- Reinforce small changes anything, such as a smile, take the initiative in something, get ready, etc, in this way positive emotions will be generated and predisposed to its repetition in the future.
Damián Montero
