Effect of Acupressure versus Aerobic Exercise on Depression in Postmenopausal Women

Abstract
Background: The effect of acupressure and aerobic exer-cise on depression was a hot topic in physical therapy in the past decades. The results of the research available to date showed that acupressure and exercise training might be a promising, additional, safe and economical method to help in improving depression.
Aim of Study: This study was conducted to compare the effect of acupressure versus aerobic exercise on depression in postmenopausal women.
Material and Methods: A sample of 40 postmenopausal women diagnosed with depression by gynecologist and con-firmed by Zung self-rating depression scale, their ages ranged from 45 to 55 years with body mass index not exceeded 30kg/m2 participated in this study from the outpatient clinic of Kasr Al-Ainy University Hospital, Cairo University. They were distributed into two groups; each consisted of 20 post-menopausal women, Group (A) received acupressure by wearing wrist band for four weeks for 24 hours and Group (B) performing aerobic exercises on treadmill 3 sessions per week for four weeks for a duration 40mins (10mins warming up, 20mins running and 10mins cooling down).
Results: Showed that there was a statistically significant decrease in the value of Zung self-rating depression scale measured at post-treatment compared with the pre-treatment in both study Groups (A) and (B) (p=0.001).
On the other hand at post-treatment, there was a statistical significant decrease in value of Zung self-rating depression scale in Group B (38.80±3.02) when compared with its cor-responding value in Group A (46.90±3.82) with Z-value= –4.903 and p-value=0.001.
Conclusion: Both acupressure and aerobic exercise have significant effect on depression in postmenopausal women but, patients may get additional benefit in improving the depression level through aerobic training program more than the acupressure.