Treating Depression With Tai Chi: State of the Art and Future Perspectives

This study had a large sample size and obtained positive findings in both patients’ subjective ratings and in inflammatory marker levels. It demonstrates the benefits of adding Tai Chi to an antidepressant regimen but does not examine the specific effect of Tai Chi on depression.Field et al. (16) investigated the effects of combined Tai Chi/yoga in 92 prenatally depressed pregnant women. They found that women practicing Tai Chi/yoga (20 min per week for 12 weeks) had lower depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance scores compared to a waitlist control group (Table 1). This study had a large sample size and provided important evidence on the effects of Tai Chi on depressed pregnant women, who generally would avoid pharmacologic treatment. However, combining Tai Chi and yoga is uncommon in the real world, and a waitlist is considered a weak control.TABLE 1Table 1 Tai Chi studies applied on patients with depression and primary outcomes.In another study, Yeung and colleagues (10) examined the practicality and outcome of using Tai Chi to treat depressive symptoms in 39 Chinese Americans with MDD. They found that 73% of patients in the Tai Chi group completed the intervention, and no adverse events were reported. This was a proof-of-concept study with a small sample size to investigate the feasibility and safety of Tai Chi for depressed Chinese Americans, a population that tends to avoid conventional mental health services due to their high levels of stigma against having m...
Source: Frontiers in Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research