Does exercise improve therapeutic response compared to antidepressant medication or placebo in patients with Major Depressive Disorder?
Exercise appears to be as effective as antidepressant medication for treating Major Depressive Disorder, with both outperforming placebo.
The efficacy of exercise in patients seems generally comparable with patients receiving antidepressant medication and both tend to be better than the placebo in patients with MDD. Placebo response rates were high, suggesting that a considerable portion of the therapeutic response is determined by patient expectations, ongoing symptom monitoring, attention, and other nonspecific factors.
Blumenthal et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
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