Bringing Exercise Into the Discussion on Mental Health

Chronic mental health conditions are increasingly prevalent across the United States.

That’s the take-away finding of a recent study commissioned by the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD).

In fact, it’s estimated that only about 17 percent of adults in the U.S. are considered to be in a state of optimal mental health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Mental health has always been a challenging issue to address. It’s complex and requires many solutions. But exercise—a potentially powerful antidote—has been chronically overlooked.

This increased prevalence of chronic mental health conditions, along with the strong connection between mental health and other chronic diseases, are noteworthy. People with diabetes, for example, are at a greater risk of depression. As many as one-third of U.S. adults (45 or older) living with arthritis also suffer from anxiety and/or depression. And a recent study found that depression poses just as great a risk in men for cardiovascular diseases as high cholesterol and obesity do.

Exercise has a powerful role to play in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases—including chronic mental health conditions. And there is evidence that positive mental health is associated with improved health outcomes.

Over the years, many studies have shown the benefits of regular physical activity to mood and mitigating the effects of stress. A 2014 study, in fact, found that for mild to moderate depression, the effect of exercise may be comparable with antidepressant medication and psychotherapy; and for severe depression, exercise seems to be a valuable complementary therapy to the traditional treatments. The study authors clearly state, “Physical exercise is an outstanding opportunity for the treatment of patients who have a mix of mental and physical health problems.”

The whole field of Psychology is a systematic fraud. I lived in Gainesville FL for a couple of years and worked theree for several more years and resided in the VA hospital for 3 months. There is UF and the then Community College that both have tremendous Psych departments. There are Psychs practicing all over the place, even more than there are abortion clinics. Psychs go through fads of really off the wall diagnosing evryone with whatever is the current rage in the field and I saw a number of my friends and my wife's friends get their lives totally ruined by whatever the fad was.

Two perfectly normal Midwestern wives who became students at UF were referred to counseling because of their Midwestern habits and the psychs "diagnosed" them as being natural lesbians and convinced them they had to act out their repressed natures. Of course their marriages went straight to hell and one became a hermit, still is. The other got sucked into the drugs and goth-pseudo art thing and could not carry on a rational conversation years later.

I got exposed to that stuff as a VA patient in 1972 when I was required to go to "counselling" as part of my rehab from a shattered leg(I got scraped up off the road 30 miles thence and there was no insurance card in my wallet but there was a DD-214). Then the universal psych approach to the patient was to answer every utterance of the "patient" with, "I think I hear you saying..." as a technique of planting the syndrome du jour into the patient. I have always been good with words and was a sarcastic SOB so I handed it right back to the psych who then gave me a hasty "diagnosis" and got as far from me as she could. Psychs, as with other liberal professionals and professional liberals could not handle subtle or crude sarcasm at all. I never saw the "diagnosis" and the docs and counsellors would not tell me.

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