Depression is an intense heaviness that weighs on your emotions and your body. This serious mental health condition may be resistant to treatments, particularly if the individual has been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). In severe cases of MDD, typical treatment regimens such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, augmented medications, and antipsychotics may not work. This presents many challenges to the patient, therapist, and the psychiatrist. In these forms of treatment resistant depression, out-of-the-box thinking is needed. A cocktail of medication, therapy, surgical and/or non-surgical solutions must be assessed in order to beat depression. Mention is often made of mind and body wellness, and indeed the two are interrelated. The age-old Latin aphorism, ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ translates into ‘A healthy mind in a healthy body.

While it is imperative to treat the mind of a depressed person through therapy sessions, to help change the gloomy thought processes of the individual, it’s often simply not enough. Physical activity is sacrosanct. When people are depressed, they tend to retreat into their shells, avoiding contact with other people. Depression truly is the loneliest illness of all. But more than that, depression is like a heavy leaden weight. It is an anchor that prevents you from doing basic, necessary things like eating, sleeping, cleaning, exercising, or working.

Why is Exercise so Good for Your Mind and Your Body?

While the mind certainly controls the body, one cannot forget the healthy mind, healthy body balance. Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry, Dr Arthur Barsky wrote about the healthy mind and body connection. Mental and physical wellness are inextricably intertwined. It is impossible to achieve life balance without taking care of one’s mental processes and physical requirements. Harvard Health Publishing recently penned an op-ed about exercise being, ‘… An All Natural Treatment to Fight Depression’, in which the merits of healthy living are highlighted.

Since approximately 10%+ of people in the United States suffer with depression at any given time, it’s important to tackle this problem with the seriousness that it deserves. Exercise has many health benefits for the body and the mind. The feel-good chemicals that are released when we exercise are known as endorphins. These have a positive effect on our minds. For depressed people, endorphins are like gold. Athletes across the board – runners, swimmers, cyclists – often talk of the high that they feel when exercising. There is the second wind effect when even an exhausted body gets a bolus of energy to continue and complete a challenge. This is the magic that depressed people so desperately need.

In depressed individuals, the mood regulating component of the brain – the hippocampus – is smaller. It’s not functioning the way it supposed to, propagating a depressed mood. When people are depressed, they’re not sleeping properly, not eating properly, and not exercising properly. This negative spiral is detrimental to overall mind and body health. There are many ways to skin a proverbial cat, and with depression it’s much the same. The conventional approach of SSRI or SNRI medication is effective for many sufferers of depression. Coupled with therapy, medication is usually enough. But for others, the combination falls flat. Exercise must be included as part of a daily regimen, or weekly regimen, for everyone. It promotes movement and circulation, the enemies of sedentary depression.