Climbing your way out of depression. Bouldering help lessen the symptoms

Adults suffering from depression could use bouldering, a form of rock climbing, to improve their mental and physical state. In Germany, this therapy through sport has already shown convincing results.

An estimated 300 million people are currently suffering from depression and countries like the United States and India have ranked up the highest percentages. In the US alone, anxiety disorders, including depression, are the most common mental illnesses with an estimated 18 per cent of the adult population, roughly 40 million people, coping with anxiety disorders.

But experts say that only about 20 per cent of them actually receive some sort of treatment and states like Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Alabama have some of the highest numbers when it comes to people meeting the criteria for depression.

And it’s exactly from Arizona that a recent study, showing the impact of sport on depression, comes from. The research shows that specifically bouldering, a form of rock climbing can improve a patient’s well being and this activity also may be used to effectively treat symptoms of 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.

Bouldering is a new form of rock climbing which involves climbing rocks or walls to a moderate height without ropes or a harness.

Participants formed two groups, one that immediately started bouldering and one that had to wait. They bouldered for three hours a week over the course of eight weeks.

Using scientific measuring, the researchers were able to see a great improvement for the team that immediately started bouldering, as opposed to those that had to wait.

“Bouldering, in many ways, is a positive physical activity,” said Stelzer, who began researching the benefits of bouldering while completing her master’s in psychology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and is now completing her doctorate at the UA. “There are different routes for your physical activity level, and there’s a social aspect along with the feeling of an immediate accomplishment when bouldering.”

The scientists went on to compare the bouldering intervention with cognitive behaviour therapy involving individuals in Erlangen, Munich and Berlin.

They hope that their studies will help people struggling with depression.

“Patients enjoyed the bouldering sessions and told us that they benefited greatly,” said Luttenberger, a psychometrics expert at the University of Erlangen. “Since rumination is one of the biggest problems for depressed individuals, we had the idea that bouldering could be a good intervention for that.”

Compared with other sports, bouldering builds muscle and endurance, which helps reduce stress and it is also beneficial as it demands more focus than other sports, the experts say. It is accessible for all people, as there are various degrees of complexity, and it also helps with social isolation.

“Bouldering not only has strong mental components, but it is accessible at different levels so that people of all levels of physical health are able to participate,” Stelzer said, adding that bouldering as a treatment could bolster physical activity and be used as a social tool allowing people to interact with one another.

The team is currently looking at ways is which bouldering could be used to complement traditional care for clinical depression. They are also trying to develop a manual for wight-week bouldering sessions to help patients with depression.

Scientists working at the study also said that they are encouraging patients with depression to take up sports, if not bouldering, some other physical activity that they enjoy.

A study carried out by scientists in Berlin some years ago pointed out that sport and physical activity bring about various changes in the brain which are otherwise achieved only through drugs. Sport and physical activity also lead to a reduced activity of the stress hormone cortisol, scientists argued.