Clinical Depression Exercise

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Pages: 5

Depression overtakes life of so many, and interferes with various aspects of everyday functioning. According to the World Health Organization, more than 300 million people live with depression, but nearly half of them aren't getting the help they need (WHO, 2012). Leaving depression untreated can lead to many complications in one’s personal and professional life, so it is essential to seek treatment.
To define, clinical depression is a common and serious mood disorder, that causes severe symptoms affecting how you feel, think, and handle daily activities, such as sleeping, eating or working. According to the DSM-5, depression is present when you have five or more of these symptoms for at least two weeks: depressed mood during most of the day;
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low cost and ease of access) and its ability to meaningfully improve depressive symptoms (Cooney, Dwan, & Mead, 2014). The general outcome from research indicates that exercise can bring about many physiological changes which result in an improvement in mood state, self-esteem and lower stress and anxiety levels (Mikkelsen et al., 2017). The form of aerobic exercise for instance, may help against mild depression, with raising endorphin levels and stimulating norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter which is related to mood (MacGill, …show more content…
In fact, mental and physical health are strongly influenced by each other. Paul Jansons et al. (2017) found that motivation for exercise may be enhanced via social support and interaction between exercise group members with similar health issues. At the same time mental health benefits of physical activity may be partly accounted for by the social interaction involved in group sports in particular (Elaine M. McMahon et al., 2016). So social support in group exercise context may promote the satisfaction of competence and relatedness, which are basic psychological needs as well as encourage one to invest in a healthier lifestyle overall. Zhou, J., D. Heim, & K. O’Brien (2015) also proved that participation in team sports leads to higher levels of happiness than when playing individual