Can Weightlifting Treat Depression?

Some people find strength training is a better mood booster than other types of exercise.

While studies suggest weightlifting can have mental health benefits, know your limits and hire a trainer to avoid injury.

The thought of doing something as ordinary as going to the grocery store used to overwhelm Becky Stuto, who's experienced depression for about 13 years. "Depression … is like bricks or a lead cape that you wear that is just weighing you down," she says. "Every task is overwhelming."

But today when Stuto, a 45-year-old associate clinical social worker in Sacramento, California, cracks her last egg or depletes her dark chocolate stash, a trip to the grocery store seems like what it is: something she, like everybody else, simply has to do now and then. "I'm OK with it," she says. "I feel lighter; my way of thinking is more proactive and not just stagnant."

Stuto is not a walking advertisement for an antidepressant, nor an electroconvulsive therapy success story. In fact, she's never tried medical treatments for her depression, which she's controlled mostly through aerobic exercise, healthy eating and sufficient sleep. Still, it wasn't until she began powerlifting last summer that she experienced the type of relief more frequently associated with drugs. "My confidence improved – my depression levels were really going down," she says. "I was overall happier and much more optimistic."

When Becky Stuto first attempted a squat less than a year ago, she fell. Now, she can squat 85 pounds. “Depression comes with a lot of fear, and to see yourself do something like that – it’s exciting,” she says. (COURTESY OF BECKY STUTO)

Exercise of any sort is well-known to improve mental health, says Michael Parent, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, who is also a competitive bodybuilder. "It enhances mood, it will help with sleep … it helps [people] feel better about their body," he says. "It gives people one more thing about themselves that they can take some pride in."

But while most attention on depression and exercise focuses on heart-pumping activities like running – which is thought to improve mood in part by enhancing the production of feel-good brain chemicals like endorphins – some research and plenty of testimonials suggest weight training, despite being anaerobic, may have mental health benefits above and beyond other types of exercise for some people. "There's a different high when you make a lift or complete your program that day," says Li Faustino, a clinical psychologist in New York City who treats people with depression and also powerlifts.