Anxiety and depression are the most frequently diagnosed psychological diseases showing a high co-morbidity. They have a severe impact on the lives of the persons concerned. Many meta-analytical studies suggested a positive anxiolytic and depression-reducing effect of exercise programs. The aim of the present article is to synthesize metaanalyses on the effects of exercise on anxiety and depression and to describe average effect sizes. For this purpose 37 meta-analyses were included reporting 50 effect sizes for anxiety scores of 42,264 participants and depression scores of 48,207 persons. The average documented anxiolytic effect of exercise in these reviews was small, 0.34. In contrast, the effect of exercise on depression was significantly higher and at a moderate level, 0.56. Data of randomized controlled trials suggest higher sizes for the effect of exercise on anxiety and depression leading to increases up to moderate and large effects, respectively. Additionally, exercise seems to be more beneficial for patients compared to participants within a non-clinical, normal range of psychological disease. Especially for the effect of exercise on anxiety, more high quality meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials are needed. Finally, possible neurobiological explanations are suggested for the positive effect of exercise on psychological disorders like anxiety and depression.

These findings add to the knowledge base relating different types of exercise and WM. Besides the efficiency of cardiovascular exercise training, a special motor-demanding intervention seems to be a beneficial strategy to improve WM in preadolescent children.

Background: Depression is a common threat to children and adolescents in terms of affecting psychosocial development and increasing their risk of suicide. Apart from conventional treatments for depression, physical exercise has become a promising alternative. This paper aims to systematically review the existing meta-analyses that focus on the impact of physical exercise on clinical and nonclinical depression in children and adolescents. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted using PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, MedLine, PubMed, and hand searching. Risk of bias analysis, effect sizes calculations, and evaluation of the methodological characteristics (AMSTAR 2) were carried out. Results: Four meta-analyses met the inclusion criteria. After analysing the overlap, the total sample contained 30 single studies (mostly including gender mixed samples) and 2,110 participants (age range 5-20 years). The medium duration of the interventions was 11.5 weeks. The sessions had a medium length of 41 min, and the frequency of implementation was three sessions per week. The most implemented intervention type was aerobic exercise, while control groups mainly continued with their regular routine, among other related options. The overall mean effect of physical exercise on depression was medium (d = −0.50). The additional analysis in clinically depressed samples documented a small to medium mean effect (d = −0.48) in favor of the intervention. Conclusion: The small to medium but consistently positive effects that were found in the present study place physical exercise as a promising and helpful alternative for children and adolescents with clinical and nonclinical depression. The limited literature focused on children and adolescents in comparison with adult samples points to the need for further research.

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Implicit motive research has shown that implicit motives are important predictors of behavior and well-being. However, little is known about the interrelationship between the different implicit motives measures frequently applied. We aimed to shed light on the convergent validity of three implicit motive measures and wanted to test their assumed statistical independence from three explicit motive measures. Therefore, we administered the picture story exercise (PSE), the operant motive test (OMT), and the multi-motive grid in one and the same study. As explicit measures, we used the personality research form, the motive enactment test, and a goal questionnaire. We investigated the statistical overlaps between all these measures (sample: 202 undergraduate students) and found that the implicit motive measures showed either no or only little correlation with each other. Furthermore, they also partly correlated with explicit motive measures. Supplementary analyses showed that the lack of statistical overlap between PSE and OMT can partly be ascribed to their different scoring systems.