The effectiveness of aerobic exercise on depression, automatic thought, dysfunctional assumption, and the early maladaptive schemas

Depression is the most common psychiatric disorder in which medication is the most common treatment. Concerning the side effects and the high expense of these treatments, developing the non-pharmaceutics treatments seem to be a necessity. The current study investigated the effectiveness of aerobic exercise on depression, automatic thought, dysfunctional assumption, and the early maladaptive schemas of depressed students.
In this randomized clinical trial study, the subjects were 48 students who were met depression criteria by structured clinical interview (DSM-IV-TR). The obtained data was analysed through conducting descriptive statistics (frequency and mean of standard deviation) and the inferential statistics (ANCOVA) via SPSS 16.
There was a significant difference between the mean of subjects’ scores in depression female (P= 0.009), and male (p=0.021). Although there was decreased between the mean of subjects’ scores in Automatic Thought and Dysfunctional assumption, but this difference was not significant. There was a significant difference between the mean of subjects’ scores in vulnerability to harm or illness (P : Totally, the results indicated that aerobic exercise can be effective as a treatment or an additional psychological and medication treatment for depression.