Doing sports halves chances of depression

People who do sports have 50% less chance of developing a psychiatric disorder than people who don’t. Once people have developed a psychiatric disorder, they recover quicker by doing sports.

This research was conducted by order of the Dutch Ministry of Health. One of the recommendations is that the government should subsidize sports programs for groups that are vulnerable for developing psychiatric problems. We are talking about depression, anxiety disorders, phobia and alcohol addiction for example.

The study was started in 1996. In the period of 1996-1999 7000 randomly selected adults were followed. The same group was studied again now.

The positive effects of sports is best seen in patients that have anxiety disorders according to the researchers. People with a newly developed psychiatric disorder had a 1,5 times higher recovery rate within 3 years when doing sports compared to patients who did not do any sports.

One to three hours of sports per week is already enough to attain this positive effect, say the researchers.

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