Adolescents with mood disorders including depression can have a difficult time trying to deal with their mood disorder, but a new study can help. Exercising and psychoeducation a few times, a week could have promising effects to better the mood of the adolescent. Psychoeducation consists of group games, poetry reading, and singing. When the only other options are likely prescribed medication which could have adverse side effects, and phycological therapy which may not work for all adolescence. Exercise and body weight can affect your brains ability to function, and therefore being at this important time of a person’s development exercise can be a great help for the overall function of the brain and increase and stabilize the mood of the person. About 50 percent of mood disorders in a population occur in youth and adolescence. Early intervention can help the adolescent with mood disorders and mood disorders in the future as well. Using exercise to help with mood disorder can also help other aspects of the adolescent including academic performance and physical health.
Exercise can be the key to helping children and adolescent better their mood disorders. How can exercising and psychoeducation help the brain in adolescence fight mood disorders? Well the brain is made up of many different areas which control different things in a person for example movement, thought, speech, and mood/behaviours. What was looked at in this study was the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC is an area of the brain known to regulate and control things like mood, cogitation, and social function. These are key aspects of mood disorders like depression. Adolescence with mood disorders may have abnormalities in the white matter tracts connecting the corpus callosum ( region that connects the two sides of the brain) to the ACC. Also, adolescence with mood disorders like subthreshold depression and bipolar symptoms had decreased structural volumes in the ACC. So, by examining the ACC we can see differences and changes in brain structure which can link mood disorders to the health and size of the ACC, as well as look at the effects of various treatments on the structure of the ACC. The study consisted of 39 adolescence with mood disorders ages 12-14. The participants brains were studied, specifically in the ACC with the use of an MRI. The participants were screened for changes in the ACC, after running 4 times a week for 30 minutes for 3 months.
After the study was concluded they found that moderate exercise and psychoeducation can increase the volume of grey matter and the thickness of the right rostral anterior cingulate. Knowing that the ACC controls things like mood and social functions increasing the grey matter thickness in the ACC and the thickness of the right rostral anterior cingulate we can make the assumption that exercise and psychoeducation does indeed help with mood disorders and the metal health of adolescence. We can link the volume and the thickness of the ACC to mood disorders as people with mood disorders may have a smaller and weaker ACC. Adolescents are in a key part of brain development and having a stronger ACC may help mood disorders including depression, and bipolar disorder. Further studies will have to be conducted to further explore these findings and further studies for larger sample sizes.
Work Cited
Lin, K., Stubbs, B., Zou, W., Zheng, W., Lu, W., Gao, Y., . . . Xu, G. (2020, May 18). Aerobic exercise impacts the anterior cingulate cortex in adolescents with subthreshold mood syndromes: A randomized controlled trial study. Retrieved February 25, 2021, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-0840-8?fbclid=IwAR0fkZQgGNeWznoowllpR_RLfB3EKDDaPlTnZq6PV8dcyyffohWEkYYHE_E
