Research Impact: Elevated depressive symptoms are more often present in those with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) than now; though our previous work highlighted that resistance exercise training (RET) improves depressive symptoms, less is known among young adults at risk for elevated depressive symptoms. Here, we quantified the effects of eight weeks of ecologically-valid, guidelines-based RET, compared to a wait-list control, on depressive symptoms among 55 young adults with and without subclinical GAD. RET induced clinically-meaningful, large-magnitude reductions in depressive symptoms after eight weeks in excess of one standard deviation, with larger magnitude improvements shown among those with subclinical depression and subclinical GAD.
O’Sullivan D, Gordon BR, Lyons M, Meyer JD, Herring MP. Effects of resistance exercise training on depressive symptoms among young adults: A randomized controlled trial. Psychiatry Research, 2023;326:115322. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115322
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