Comparison of Beneficial Effects of Kinesiotherapy for Seasonal and Non-Seasonal Depression

Although kinesiotherapy is usually used for improvement of a person’s endurance, mobility and strength, it can be also beneficial for different mood disorders including depression. We compared the clinical effects of several types of one-week mono and combined treatments in women with non-seasonal depression, seasonal depression and without depression. A week of kinesiotherapy was equally beneficial for nonseasonal and seasonal depression. A week of bright light therapy produced a similarly strong antidepressant response only in seasonal depressives. One-week therapies with exercise and/or bright light prevented relapse and produced further improvement after night sleep deprivation. However, if at least one of such treatment modalities ensured excellent response, there was no additional benefit from their combination. Since the specific feature of depression is that only in this illness a placebo effect can be very strong, these results highlighted once again the possibility that "visible" one-week interventions can work mostly as powerful placebos.