The Data--and Lack of Data--on Exercise and Mental Health

Hi. I'm Dr Emily Deans, an adult general psychiatrist and a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. I'm here with our video blog on lifestyle interventions and mental health. What are the latest data and what alternative therapies besides medication can we safely recommend to our mental health patients?

Today I'm going to be talking about exercise. In some respects, it seems like a no-brainer. Most of us have experienced that good feeling that comes along with working out. I've certainly had patients come to me for the first time with mental health problems because they had an injury that prevented them from exercising, and so their coping mechanism was gone. Clearly, exercise must be doing something to help us with anxiety or depression.

Unfortunately, the data have not been that great historically. I'm going to restrict our comments today to depression and anxiety in adults and then ADHD in children, where we have a little bit of literature to lead our discussion. First, let's talk about the problems with the research. There are lots of different methods and protocols. Single-blinded is the highest standard that we have, obviously. It's hard to blind whether you're exercising or not.