How healthy lifestyle can help to prevent depression

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A healthy lifestyle that involves moderate alcohol consumption, a healthy diet, regular physical activity, healthy sleep and frequent social connection can help to reduce the risk of depression, according to an analysis.

International research published in Nature Mental Health examined a combination of factors including lifestyle factors, genetics, brain structure and immune and metabolic systems to identify the underlying mechanisms that might explain the link.

Using data from almost 290,000 people in the UK Biobank, of whom 13,000 had depression, they followed the individuals for nine years and identified seven healthy lifestyle factors linked with a lower risk of depression.

These were: moderate alcohol consumption; healthy diet; regular physical activity; healthy sleep; not smoking; low-to-moderate sedentary behaviour; and frequent social connection, although having between seven and nine hours of sleep a night made the biggest difference, reducing the risk of depression by 22%.

Frequent social connection, which reduced the risk of depression by 18%, was the most protective against recurrent depressive disorder.