Can Rock Climbing Help With Depression?

UA researcher Eva-Maria Stelzer and Katharina Luttenberger of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg led a team that involved more than 100 individuals in a bouldering intervention in Germany, where some hospitals have begun to use climbing as a therapeutic treatment.

The participants were randomly split into two groups. One immediately began the intervention, while the other group had to wait to start bouldering, which involves climbing rocks or walls to a moderate height without ropes or a harness. Each participant bouldered for three hours a week over the course of eight weeks.

The research team measured the depression of group members at different points in the study using the Beck's Depression Inventory and the depression subscale of the Symptom Check List Revised, known as SCL-90-R.

The team's major finding was that, during the therapy, the immediate intervention group's Beck's Depression scores improved by 6.27 points, but for the same time period the group that was initially wait-listed improved by only 1.4 points. This drop in score reflects an improvement of one severity grade from moderate to mild depression levels.

Source: corespirit.com/articles/can…

Feels strange (but good) to read this here. My mother in law was a participant until her shoulder forced her out of bouldering. The sessions were really great for her.

(For transparency's sake, two of the staff members involved are friends of mine)

Exercise is good for you. 

The original article: https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12888-015-0585-8.pdf

Climber 4QualityCommunitywrote:

Exercise is good for you. 

And makes you feel good.

It can, as long as you don't visit MP.

Buck Rogerswrote:

It can, as long as you don't visit MP.

MP, the anti-antidepressant. 

Guaranteed to make you lose all faith in humanity in three to five threads.

I agree. Not sure if climbing does much for depression or not. But it definitely helps with a regular old bad day.

Imagine the improvements if they climbed trad!

Yes

I climb all the time and I’m extremely depressed. Helps a little. Maybe it’s a cure for some people. 

This is a super good book that anyone interested in climbing/depression needs to read.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008SB59MW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I think there's a pendulum to it. I think if you get really, really wrapped up in climbing, then FOMO of climbing can actually be depressing on its own. (Speaking from my own experience.)

Given that this is dealing with mental health and I may take this down later, I would really appreciate if people would refrain from quoting this. 

something not unique to rock climbing but a benefit of rock climbing is that it adds structure and requires you to be in the outdoors, both things that help with some people's mental illness.  Simply having something to look forward to sometimes feels like enough.  Knowing that many days seem to just bleed into one bummer, but on Tuesday you're not going to watch the clock burn away but have a specific time when something good happens, is powerful.  Being basically confronted with the outdoors is also amazing.  Isolation feels easy and it just feels hard to force yourself outside.  If you have plans, someone is relying on you, and you know you have to be somewhere by a certain time, there's no avoiding having a day in the woods. 

And depending on what you're struggling with, climbing is engaging mentally in a way that you can almost distract or even push your energy into it. in some cases this stops being beneficial and starts being problematic, but for most having something they need to actually think about that you're excited about is a relief.  It's a place to put physical and mental energy that's positive.

For reasons I'd rather not discuss, I also can admit that the added adventure and danger of trad climbing is absolutely a huge plus for me.  Hard to describe publicly without doxing myself, but it's there. 

EDIT

other benefits specific to myself, though I'd assume other have similar feelings:  The partnership aspect is very powerful. When you are on an objective or even just cragging there's an element of intimacy because you are both literally putting your life in your partner's hands in a way that isn't the norm in most other sports. It's easy to form powerful bonds in those situations, and relationships like that are not always the norm for people that struggle with mental health. When isn't feeling well, a response is sometimes to shut friends and that just compounds the issue.  With a climbing partnership, there is a closeness that I think connects people in a way that can be extremely helpful. 

Additionally there is power in solitude. This may sound contradictory to what I posted above, but in my mind the overstimulation of many people's lives can make mental health worse, which is why we sometimes see people becoming isolated. that sort of isolation, in my experience, does not actually allow for much positive movement.  However having a moment with some sort of solitude in the outdoors, or even up high in a gym, is a different feeling.  I think it's solitude provides space for thought, while isolation forces thought into all spaces. 

IDK, most of the time I'm pretty depressed after I go bouldering (I suck ass)

I was gunna post something, but Rob D pretty much already said it. 

This: "It's easy to form powerful bonds in those situations, and relationships like that are not always the norm for people that struggle with mental health. When [I'm not] feeling well, a response is sometimes to shut friends [out] and that just compounds the issue.  With a climbing partnership, there is a closeness that I think connects people in a way that can be extremely helpful."

If you have climbing partners (AKA, friends in general) that you care about and know suffer from depression (or some other mental illness), I really, really urge you to consider that quote. You're obviously not solely responsible for anyone's mental health beside your own, but just reaching out, little things, can make a huge difference in someone's life who does struggle. I know it does in mine ... 

thanks for lightly editing.  That was an edit and I didn't want to edit the edit. 

Great points, Rob D

Climbing was the only constant in my life besides depression for close to a decade. Much of the time I was still in a really bad place mentally, but climbing made things a bit better.

Rob D. You hit my nail on the head. It's not something I've been able to articulate as you have.