Browsing by Author "Simpanen, Sonja"

Exercise as a treatment of depression has been researched for many decades. So far it can be said that exercise alleviates the symptoms of depression at least a little and it can be recommended as a part of the treatment of depression. The way exercise reduces depression has been explained by both psychological and physiological mechanisms. This thesis is concentrating on the psychological mechanisms that have been proposed as the most potential psychological mechanisms in the research literature. The following are self-efficacy, self-esteem, affect regulation, distraction and behavioral activation. There was a limited research examining the psychological mechanisms and therefore most of the mechanisms are mainly based on hypotheses. Self-efficacy was the strongest candidate mechanism based on this review but there were only a few studies available of this mechanism which also had methodological problems. Also due to the lack of quality research of the other above mentioned mechanisms there is little we can say. While the mechanisms may have a connection with depression, the causality remains unclear. More research of the psychological mechanisms is needed to understand how exercise reduces depression in the long term. This could lead to an improvement of the state of exercise in the treatment of depression and to a development of better exercise interventions. Examining the mechanisms would also be beneficial to the development of all depression interventions in general.