[area51org]

I wouldn't go that far, but there was a now-famous study (Princeton?) that showed that doing aerobic exercise for maybe 30 mins every day, about five days per week, was equally effective at alleviating depression symptoms.

[jdietrich]

There's one big problem with that - getting seriously depressed people to do 30 minutes of exercise (or anything else) five days a week. "Get more exercise" is excellent advice for someone who feels a bit down, but it's absolutely useless for someone who can barely summon up the strength to eat or brush their teeth.

[jasonfarnon]

It gets even harder if you offer them the alternative of just taking a pill. For widespread health policy, we should want the proportion of depressives who will never learn to manage it themselves because a pill is offered to be smaller than the proportion for whom the pill is effective. I had always assumed these pills were effective enough but studies like these make me wonder.

[ltbarcly3]

It's also very hard to get severely depressed people to make a Dr's appt and get out of bed and show up to it. It's hard to get them to do anything.

[diob]

It’s always frustrating to see the implication that people just need to exercise to solve their mental health struggles. It might not be your intention, but it's a take I see a lot online from influencers.

I say this as someone who is extremely fit. I've worked out religiously since high school. While exercise is integral to me feeling somewhat normal and provides a short-term boost, that is just not how it works for everyone. Some of us have 'broken brains' that cardio can't fix.

Exercise manages my baseline, but sertraline is what helped me finally bridge the gap. It allowed me to regulate my emotions and anxiety in a way that no amount of exercise ever did. And the introspection from being on it helped me make lifelong changes.

To be honest, fearmongering from folks online is what stopped me from taking it sooner, but I wish I had. It was fairly life-changing.