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Comment by sgillen | Hacker News Reader

> I think it's already in the "everybody knows" category

I’m sure most people have a pretty good idea exercise can help with mental health. I think the next thing that needs to happen is a broader awareness of just how effective exercise can be, and that it should be one of the very first thing tried to improve mental health. I think this should happen along with a general increase in mental health awareness (you can’t use exercise to help with your depression if you don’t recognize you’re depressed).

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> I’m sure most people have a pretty good idea exercise can help with mental health. I think the next thing that needs to happen is a broader awareness of just how effective exercise can be,

First step would be "get some evidence it does anything at all". We're not even at that point yet.

Almost everyone in this thread talking about exercise as a treatment for depression is failing to correct for cuasality, or for sponteneous remission.

> (you can’t use exercise to help with your depression if you don’t recognize you’re depressed)

More like you can't use exercise to treat depression because it doesn't work. There's no clear difference between treating depression with nothing or treating it with exercise.

And so we end up with a group of people being given bad advice, trying to follow it, and then when it doesn't work (because it won't work for most of them) being blamed for doing the wrong type of exercise or not doing enough.

Agreed for most people with mild-moderate mental illness. It's an intervention that can reduce intensity for quite a number of people, though not everyone. (I wish more people would also get checked early on for easily fixed metabolic stuff like low iron, wonky thyroid etc.)

My completely anecdotal example... it kept me from starting crazy meds for at least an extra year or two (by the time I was up to 1-2 hours, 7d/week, it was time to bite the bullet.. though at lower doses than I likely would have otherwise needed.

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