THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL EXERCISE ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF ELDERLY PEOPLE WITH DEPRESSION: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

This study aimed to conduct a systematic review of the literature to investigate the influence of physical exercise on the mental health of elderly people with depressive conditions. The review was prepared following the methodological recommendations proposed by The Cochrane Collaboration. The terms used were "elderly", "physical exercise", "mental health" mediated by the Boolean operator AND. Searches were carried out in the Scielo, Pubmed, and Line Universitet databases.  The searches covered the period from 2019 to 2024 and were carried out in May 2024. A total of 10,504 studies were found in these databases and in the end 13 articles were included in the results of the present systematic review. The main findings of the present systematic review of the literature indicate a predominance of conventional training methods, variable in the intervention periods, positive score after application of the intervention methods. Thus, through these findings, different methods of intervention with physical exercises were identified, where all of them are effective when they demonstrate that the participants obtained improvements in depressive symptoms after the participation periods, which proves the effectiveness of physical exercise, in this sense, having a positive influence reducing depressive symptoms and consequently improving the mental health of the elderly.