As a result of frequent depressive disorders and high costs, effective and economic treatments become more important in the management of depression. Sports therapy as one possibility of intervention seems to be promising. Numerous studies have shown that the effect of exercise affects the moods of healthy subjects. However, there are only few who conducted investigations with patients diagnosed with clinical depression. In the present paper a systematic review of randomised, controlled studies from medical and psychological databases was conducted to investigate the effect of exercise on clinical depression. RESULTS: The analysed studies with sufficient methodical validity point out a clinical significant effectiveness of regular performed exercise in the management of depression of adults. The effects produced by aerobic exercise are comparable with those of anaerobic exercise. In the initial phase of the treatment a supervised training has shown to be important. Together the analysed studies showed a moderate to high validity. However, there were limitations like the lack of intention-to-treat-analysis, the failure of blinding the investigators, the lack of concealed randomisation, small samples as well as the heterogeneity of the studies. CONCLUSION: Sports therapy is effective in the management of depression and can be easily integrated. It should be a definite part of physiotherapeutic concept of treatments.

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