00:00 Wide
– crowds on street
Medium
wide – crowds on street
Wide
– Professor Campbell enters Peninsula Medical School
c.u.
Peninsula Medical School sign
Wide
– gymnasium. Walker on treadmill in foreground
c.u.
feet on treadmill
Wide
– Dr Taylor enters shot
c.u.
Dr Taylor talking to walker
Wide
– Dr Taylor walks away
c.u.
Walker’s face
Guide Voice: Depression – a debilitating
illness that could strike anyone and it’s on the increase.
It’s currently the fourth most important cause of disability
worldwide – and expected to become the second most important
by 2020.
Now, new studies in the South West of England are researching
different approaches to the treatment of depression –
approaches that may have a significant impact on this debilitating
illness.
Combining expertise in Psychiatry, Exercise Psychology, Health
Economics and Primary Care, collaboration between the Universities
of Bristol and Exeter, along with the Peninsula Medical School,
will conduct one of the largest ever studies into the use of
exercise as a treatment for depression.
00:41 SOT: Dr. Adrian Taylor, Reader in
Exercise and Health Psychology, School of Sport and Health
Sciences, University of Exeter - “Exercise
has a number of different benefits not just, potentially, effects
on mental health. It has…obviously, we know that it helps
people keep weight off, it might help strengthen bone and muscular
skeletal dimensions of health - so if we have a drug that's just
designed to treat depression it doesn't also add positive benefits
to weight gain and muscular skeletal health, so it makes sense to
have an intervention that involves a number of different health
benefits. But really, we're particularly interested here in 'does
exercise help people reduce depression?' - with some other symptoms
associated with depression, such as anxiety and low self
esteem.”
01:26 Rear
shot, walker on treadmill
c.u.
treadmill display
c.u.
walking legs
Wide
– 2 women walking in park
Guide Voice: The researchers are keen to stress
that they’re not talking about extreme fitness classes or
turning patients into competitive athletes; as little as 30 minutes
of brisk walking a day might have an effect – and it
doesn’t have to be done in the gym. Walking in the local park
with a friend at lunchtime could have equally beneficial
effects.
01:43 SOT: John Campbell, Professor of General
Practice and Primary Care, Peninsula Medical School -
“We're looking at increasing the general approach to
exercise but on a fairly moderate level, for folk who have
depression, over a period of time. We're not looking to make people
into athletes we just want to improve the amount of exercise and
activity that they're undertaking on a day to day basis and we
think that...there is good evidence that is likely to have
potential beneficial effects in this group of
patients.”
02:07 Swimmer
in pool
Wide
– swimmers in pool
c.u.
swimmer
Guide Voice: More than 750 patients will be
recruited to take part in the groundbreaking trial to investigate
whether exercise can help in the treatment of depression, alone or
in conjunction with medication. Reviews of the current evidence
suggest exercise may be an effective treatment, but rigorous
studies have yet to be carried out.
02:25 SOT: Dr. Taylor –
“Certainly where people have been prescribed medication
there is an increasing view amongst patients that they'd prefer to
have an option, a treatment option, that involved some sense of
control some degree of self management that they felt they were
doing something for their own benefit rather than just taking
medication which may have some side effects. So there is a real
advantage and there is a growing interest in alternative therapies
like exercise, aerobic type exercise to actually help people's
physical self.”
03:02 SOT: Glyn Lewis, Professor of Psychiatric
Epidemiology, University of Bristol – “I
think people are increasingly recognising that depression is very
common and very disabling and it’s important that we work out
the best ways of treating depression. There’s also a lot of
reluctance, I think, for people to take anti-depressant drugs and
they want to have alternatives to anti depressants. So our strategy
is really to work out who are the people who really do need the
drugs and will benefit from drugs and also to look at alternatives
for those people who don’t want to take tablets or might
benefit from alternative approaches.”
03:39 Wide
– General Practitioner and patient
c.u.
– syringe taking blood
c.u.
– GP
Guide Voice: Where drugs are considered to be
the answer, The University of Bristol are also conducting research
in order to establish whether or not, in the case of anti
depressants there are genetic predictors to indicate which patients
would benefit from which drugs. By sampling patient DNA they hope
to more accurately match the treatment to the individual.
03:59 SOT: Prof. Lewis –
“There’s now a lot of interest in whether we can
use the much improved data on people’s genetic make up
that’s come from the human genome project to see whether we
can target drugs more accurately. At the moment the trial data
suggests that we can only say something about groups of people but
we know that some people get better on tablets and others
don’t. Some people might get bad side effects from tablets
and others don’t and it’s very likely that
people’s genetic make-up affects that kind of response to
drugs.”
04:33 Technicians
in laboratory handling DNA samples
c.u.
samples in machine
Extreme
c.u. tissue sampling
Wide
– swimming pool
Swimmer
Guide Voice: In the UK alone, depression costs
the Health Service some £80 million a year in antidepressant
prescriptions – a situation echoed in primary care around the
world. More efficient targeting of the drugs we use, as well as
thorough investigation of alternative approaches to treatment must
be a priority for the future.
04:53 End
of cut
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