Kessler and associates (2003) report that about 6.6. percent or 14 million Americans suffered from a serious depressive disorder in 2002, while more than 16 percent (around 35 million Americans) have experienced depression over their lifetimes. Statistics also show that Americans are increasingly seeking treatment for depression, which is associated with a rapid growth of sales of antidepressant medications. For example, Kessler and associates report that in 2002, prescription sales for antidepressants grew more than 20 percent above what they had been in the previous year.
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 chronic pain with another group of patients receiving standard medical care plus massage therapy. In addition to measures of pain, measures of
depression levels were also assessed.
Findings indicated that pain as well as depression and anxiety were improved in both groups; however, it was only the massage group in which the improvements were maintained at follow-up. Unfortunately, the sample used in the study was small and the authors noted that continuing research was needed to see if the observed resu...