Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Exercise Therapy without Antidepressants for Depression Condition: A Literature Review

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
LITERATURE REVIEW (ASSESSMENT 1)
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Introduction
Depression has become one of the primary reasons for disability throughout the world
which has increased the disease related burden affecting 35% of the world population. As per the
world health organization, the prevalence of depression is 25-30% for women and 10 to 15% for
men (Avenevoli et al., 2015). The conventional treatment for depression includes antidepressant
medications as well as several type of psychotherapy that helps people to come out of their
depression condition (Panagioti et al., 2014). However, it has been seen that inclusion of
exercises and/or cognitive behavioral therapy without antidepressant drugs could also increase
the efficiency of the recovery and decrease the dependency of such anti-depressant drugs, which
could be an adverse side effect of the drug.
The primary aim of this paper is to provide a detailed search strategy in which keywords
and the databases used to search for the research evidences. Further, the methodology, the PICO
question developed to conduct succinct search, a precise literature review, and the findings of the
five research articles would be provided.
PICO question
Population/Problem Intervention Comparison Outcome
People affected with
depression
Cognitive behavioral
therapy and/or exercise
therapy without
antidepressants
Therapies with
Antidepressants
Improves depression
condition

2NURSING ASSIGNMENT
The question: is inclusion of cognitive behavioral therapy and/or exercise therapy without
antidepressants effective for improvement of depression condition in people affected with
depression compared to Therapies with Antidepressants?
Search strategy
To find evidences related to the developed PICO question, databases containing research
articles were searched. The databases included in the search strategy was Google scholar, Pub
Med, CINAHL, and Medscape and keyword combinations with Boolean operators were used
to collect relevant and concise research articles. The keywords which were used for this search
process are ‘cognitive behavioral therapy in depression’, ‘exercise therapy in depression’,
‘cognitive behavioral therapy in depression without antidepressant’, ‘exercise therapy
without anti depressants’, ‘cognitive behavioral therapy and/or exercise therapy without
antidepressant’. These keywords were then connected suing Boolean operators that is
‘And/Or’ and then with permutation and combination, these keywords were used in all these
databases. After obtaining the results, several inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to select
and eliminate research article from the search results. Research article that included primary
study, systematic review, meta-analysis, proper methodology, finding and data analysis in
English language were included in the study. On the other hand, descriptive papers, language
other than English, and improper data analysis and methodology were neglected and excluded
from the study. Finally, five research article related to the topic were included in the study. The
prisma diagram for search strategy is as follows: