Due to mental reasons, most depressed patients feel incompetent and useless, they don’t want to move around, don’t want to do anything, and have no interest and enthusiasm to do things. They sit all day, sigh long and short, and stay closed all day. Some even feel that the future is bleak and life is long, and that whatever they do will not help. This is the “sense of helplessness” of depressed patients. This “feeling of helplessness” and depression form a vicious circle: the more severe the depression, the stronger the feeling of helplessness; at the same time, the increased feeling of helplessness will lead to more depressed depressed patients, and further reduce the enthusiasm of work and activities, the result is, of course, nothing, so they blame themselves for being incompetent and useless, which exacerbates the depressive symptoms. To treat depression, it is necessary to break this vicious circle. One of the most basic ways to break this vicious circle is to increase activity and do what you can. Numerous scientific studies have confirmed that exercise helps people with depression to recover. It has been reported that in terms of recovery from depression, consistent aerobic exercise three times a week is almost as effective as medication; antidepressants simply provide faster relief, not a more effective approach. That’s the only difference between the two. In addition, the researchers found that depressed patients who exercised consistently had a much lower relapse rate than those who relied on medication alone. A comparative study showed that treatment with antidepressants for 4 months was 66.6% effective, exercise therapy was 60% effective, and medication plus exercise therapy was 69% effective; after 10 months these patients were again observed for their relapse rate and it was found that the relapse rate was 38% for those who received medication and 31% for those who received medication plus exercise therapy. The clinical observations revealed that the benefits of exercise for depressed patients are at least: (1) Exercise can make people feel better because after activity, they no longer focus on their bad feelings, so they can properly reduce the feeling of depression; (2) Exercise can reduce the feeling of fatigue because long periods of inactivity, sitting for days, the muscles are very easy to fatigue. And because the blood flow is slow, fatigue recovery is even slower. (3) Exercise helps to recover self-confidence Through activity, one can find that one has not lost one’s ability, and even discover other potentialities of oneself, and recover self-confidence; (4) Activity improves one’s thinking ability Through activity, one can consider what to do and how to do it, helping to recover control over life. Other authors summarize the reasons why exercise promotes the recovery of depressed people as follows: on the one hand, physical activity dispels the hormones released in the depressed state and improves the ability of the adrenal medulla to secrete catecholamines; on the other hand, physical activity improves the regulation of the body’s central nervous system by releasing a brain chemical called beta-endorphin and increases the body’s tolerance to harmful stimuli, making people feel Calm and happy. In addition, as a distraction, exercise can be life-enriching. So how can depressed people get better results through exercise? It is generally accepted that the prescription for exercise to eliminate depression is to perform sustained aerobic exercise with large muscle groups, such as brisk walking, jogging, jumping rope or calisthenics, or playing ball. Regardless of the type of exercise, depressed people can refer to the following exercise recommendations: (1) gradual Do not imagine that you have never been used to exercise you can immediately be able to accept the amount of high-intensity exercise, which will only demoralize you and even make muscle injury. Remember the principle of gradual progress, the first week can be just three days of exercise, just a few minutes to ten minutes a day is enough. The second or third week will slowly increase the amount of exercise, slowly increasing to a quarter of an hour or half an hour per exercise, four days a week. (2) separate periods of exercise is not necessary to do all the daily fitness program at once. Many people like to work out in a small amount of form, and the daily fitness program is divided into different times to complete. For example, for a 45-minute jog, it is better to split it into three 15-minute sessions than to run through 45 minutes at a time. (3) Do only what you like to do Exercise This advice may seem redundant, but in fact many people choose the exercise is not what they like best, but what they feel is the most effective. And it’s impossible to last long doing exercises that you don’t like mechanically like this. Always keep in mind that there are many ways to exercise, and we should choose the mode of exercise we like. If you like to swim, you can often go swimming in the nearby pool instead of forcing yourself to jog, and if you like to watch TV, you can also put the treadmill in front of the TV and exercise while watching TV. What you need to do is to try different forms of exercise and find the one you like best. (4) Find a workout buddy One person will not last long to exercise, and you may stop exercising at some point when you say no. But if you agree to a fitness program with a friend, you will not be so easily swayed. So it’s important to find a workout buddy, such as a neighbor to go jogging with, or a friend to find time to play ping pong every week, etc. By the same token, join some fitness classes, such as yoga or aerobics classes, can force yourself to keep exercising. (5) Move your body more every day To develop the habit of exercise, in addition to a fitness program, we can also move more in their daily lives. For example, when you go home instead of taking the elevator and climbing the stairs; when you go to work, park your car farther away so that you can walk a little further; hide the TV remote control, forcing yourself to walk to the TV every time you change the channel. Over time, these daily accumulation of extra activities will also make our health better.