Aerobic Exercise

This pilot study, using a modified single systems design, attempted to answer the question: what effect does an occupational therapy aerobic exercise program have on adolescents with depression? The sample was comprised of four adolescent boys from a private psychiatric hospital. Their ages ranged from 12 to 18 years and all had a primary diagnosis of major depression. The program consisted of brisk walking and running. It met three times a week for one hour over a 65 day period. Each session started with a warm-up of five minutes of slow walking followed by ten minutes of stretching. During each session a subject was randomly assigned to wear a heart rate monitor. The monitor was used to insure the subject exercised within a target zone of 70 to 80 percent of his maximum heart rate. The length of the walk/run phase was increased from 10 to 15 to 20 minutes only when the subjects felt comfortable exercising for longer periods of time. The last phase was a warmdown of five minutes of slow walking followed by ten minutes of stretching. Discussions about the activity and the boys' lives were included in the program. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck 1961) was used to measure depression levels because of its sound psychometric properties and because of its frequent use in other research studies to assess depression. The BDI was administered five times; as a pretest on the initial meeting, as a re-test after 29 days of the program, as a second re-test after 50 days of the program, as a third re-test after 65 days of the program, and 45 days after the program ended. These data were used to measure changes in depression throughout the program. The results from the BDI showed a general decrease in depression scores for all subjects. Due to the small number of subjects and data points, the results were considered to be preliminary.