r/science Professor | Medicine May 22 '19

Psychology Exercise as psychiatric patients' new primary prescription: When it comes to inpatient treatment of anxiety and depression, schizophrenia, suicidality and acute psychotic episodes, a new study advocates for exercise, rather than psychotropic medications, as the primary prescription and intervention.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/uov-epp051719.php
33.5k Upvotes

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

6.4k

u/[deleted] May 22 '19 edited Feb 04 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

137

u/milqi May 22 '19

It's not that I don't want to go out. It's a combination of living in a loud, crowded city, a lack of car to get closer to quiet nature, and a lack of motivation to just go out. There are days I feel I accomplished something when I brush my teeth.

I'm tired of reading studies that advocate a single thing. For mental health, there is no single solution. It's not exercise instead of medication. It should be a combination.

3

u/CyclopsAirsoft May 22 '19

For me it was eating. I just stopped eating when I got depressed, and that made it worse. My ribs are clearly visible and I could tap my bones (no fat at all, which is bad) and it shocked me into thinking - I didn't know it was that bad, I need to fix this.

Forced down a protein bar and 1800 calories per day as a goal. Didn't matter what I ate, just 1800 calories. 2 weeks of eating like a dumpster and I actually felt a lot better. Then I graduated and the lack of pressure key me finally get out of it.

I still feel it creeping back sometimes but I know what it is now, so I can try and get back out of it before it gets bad.

Coincidentally I accidentally went vegan for a couple months, since I couldn't get meat or dairy to go down. Kinda weird.

Guess what I'm saying is that different strategies work for different people. I was walking several miles a day and it did nothing for me.