Studies have also found that physical activity reduces the symptoms of depression as effectively as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), pharmacotherapy, and even bright light therapy in individuals with MDD [23, 42, 43]. For example, a recent study randomized participants to either supervised exercise in a group setting, home-based exercise, antidepressant medication (sertraline, 50–200 mg daily), or placebo for 16 weeks [23]. After 16 weeks of treatment, participants receiving active treatments tended to have higher remission rates than the placebo controls and those receiving supervised exercise had similar remission rates to that of antidepressants (i.e., supervised exercise = 45%; home-based exercise = 40%; medication = 47%; placebo = 31%). Similarly, a second study found that when compared to a sedentary control group, the patients randomized to an aerobic exercise group required a lower dosage of sertraline than did the individuals in the sertraline monotherapy treatment condition [30].
