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Exercise Treatments for Psychosis: a Review

  • Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders (J Csernansky, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Opinion statement

Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness that has profound effects on a person’s health and quality of life. Exercise represents a promising new treatment option that may supplement current psychosocial and pharmacological interventions for psychosis. A large body of work suggests that exercise can improve cardio-metabolic and health behavior and facilitate neurogenesis in areas of the brain that are notably impacted by psychosis. Recent efforts to incorporate exercise as either stand-alone or adjunctive treatment for individuals with schizophrenia range from yoga and light stretching to moderately intense walking, bike riding, or team sports. These interventions suggest that moderately intense exercise may be beneficial for improving both positive and negative symptomatology, cognition, and functioning. Indeed, exercise may be beneficial for decreasing risk factors for a wide range of health problems often observed in patients with schizophrenia, including weight gain and metabolic syndrome as well as tobacco and substance use. Given the positive results from interventions in schizophrenia patients, there is an impetus for incorporating exercise in the early stages of the disorder. Notably, individuals at ultrahigh risk (UHR) for psychosis report more sedentary behavior and perceive less benefit from exercise; interventions prior to the onset of the disorder may be helpful for increasing health behaviors, perhaps delaying or preventing the onset of psychosis. Taken together, for individuals with psychosis, exercise may provide holistic benefits for the neural to the social impairments.

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Acknowledgements

Dr. Mittal is a consultant with Takeda Pharmaceuticals. No other authors have conflict to disclose. Dr. Mittal was supported by R01MH094650 and R21/R33MH103231.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Vijay A. Mittal Ph.D., Teresa Vargas B.S., K. Juston Osborne M.A. & Ivanka Ristanovic M.A.

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Vijay A. Mittal Ph.D.

  3. Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Vijay A. Mittal Ph.D.

  4. Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Vijay A. Mittal Ph.D.

  5. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Derek Dean M.A. & Tina Gupta B.A.

  6. Center for Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Derek Dean M.A.

  7. Department of Psychiatry, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA

    Christine I. Hooker Ph.D.

  8. Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Stewart A. Shankman Ph.D.

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Dr. Mittal is a consultant with Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Mittal was supported by R01MH094650 and R21/R33MH103231.

Vijay A. Mittal declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Teresa Vargasa declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Juston Osbornea declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Derek Deane declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Mittal, V.A., Vargas, T., Juston Osborne, K. et al. Exercise Treatments for Psychosis: a Review. Curr Treat Options Psych 4, 152–166 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40501-017-0112-2

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