EFFECTS OF MASSAGE THERAPY ON DEPRESSION

Clearly, the foregoing statistics highlight the urgent need for finding effective treatments for depression. In this regard, Moyer, Rounds and Hannum (2004) report that massage therapy is gaining increasing status an adjunct treatment for a wide variety of both physical and mental conditions, one of which is depression. In general, massage therapy refers to a variety of methods and techniques involving the manipulation of soft tissue for healing and/or therapeutic purposes (Clay & Pounds, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature on the effectiveness of massage therapy for the treatment of depression.

There are relatively strong reasons to believe that massage therapy can, at least to some extent, alleviate depression. In one study, Walach, Guthlin and Konig (2003) compared a group of patients receiving standard medical care for c

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. All measures were post-tested and showed no significant differences between groups; however, it was found that at the end of the six week period and again at follow-up, the depression levels of the group receiving the multidisciplinary management program with massage therapy had significantly lower depression levels than the group receiving standard care. Unfortunately, because the multidisciplinary program also included additional complementary treatments, there is no way to determine how much of the beneficial effects on depression were directly due to massage therapy. Diego, Field, Hermandez-Reif, Hart, Brucker, and Burman (2002) assessed the effects of massage therapy on depression levels of spinal cord injury patients. All subjects in the study were randomly assigned to either a group that received two 40-min massage therapy sessions per week for 5 weeks, or a group practicing motion exercise involving the arms, neck and shoulders for the same amount of time. While both groups of subjects showed improvement in terms of physical ability, it was only the massage group that evidenced a significant lowering of previous depression levels. Further, the massage group also showed a stronger increase in muscle strength and range
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Approximate Word count = 1267
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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