01/11/2026
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It's common for us to feel better after we move our body, and a new review shows just how real that effect can be. Even more gentle movement like walking or gardening can help ease depression just as well as talk therapy or antidepressants.
“It really reiterates that exercise provides an option for people who have depressive symptoms, and confirms that exercise may be as effective as psychotherapy and antidepressants,” says Andrew Clegg at the University of Lancashire in the UK.
This is not a brand new idea. Earlier research, including a major 2013 review from the Cochrane Library, found that exercise could reduce depression symptoms as effectively as common treatments like antidepressants or cognitive behavioural therapy.
Because of findings like these, many healthcare organizations now encourage exercise as part of depression care. In the UK, for example, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends weekly aerobic exercise such as jogging for about 10 weeks, usually alongside other treatments, since no single approach works for everyone.
Since that 2013 review, dozens of new studies have been published, which led the Cochrane Library to update its analysis. “This latest review [almost] doubles the evidence base that was in the previous one,” says Clegg, who helped author the review.
Movement and exercise activate the sympathetic nervous system and can often bring us up out of a chronic shutdown (from the survival portion of the parasympathetic nervous system), which is the state of our nervous system where the feeling of depression arises.
