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| LETTERS TO EDITOR |
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| Year : 2019 | Volume
: 41
| Issue : 1 | Page : 93-94 |
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Comments on “leisure time physical activity and risk of developing depression among the youth of Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, India”
Satish Suhas1, Rahul Kumar Chakravarty2, Ramdas Ransing3, Naresh Vadlamani4, Chittaranjan Andrade5
1 Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
2 Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India
3 Department of Psychiatry, B.K.L. Walawalkar Rural Medical College, Sawarde, Maharashtra, India
4 Columbus Hospital - Institute of Psychiatry and Deaddiction Chikoti Gardens, Begumpet, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
5 Department of Psychopharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
| Date of Web Publication | 4-Jan-2019 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Satish Suhas
Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore - 560 029, Karnataka
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/IJPSYM.IJPSYM_444_18
How to cite this article:
Suhas S, Chakravarty RK, Ransing R, Vadlamani N, Andrade C. Comments on “leisure time physical activity and risk of developing depression among the youth of Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, India”. Indian J Psychol Med 2019;41:93-4 |
How to cite this URL:
Suhas S, Chakravarty RK, Ransing R, Vadlamani N, Andrade C. Comments on “leisure time physical activity and risk of developing depression among the youth of Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, India”. Indian J Psychol Med [serial online] 2019 [cited 2019 Dec 14];41:93-4. Available from: http://www.ijpm.info/text.asp?2019/41/1/93/249464 |
Sir,
Singh et al.[1] studied the association between leisure-time physical activity and the cross-sectional prevalence of depression among the youth of Kangra district in Himachal Pradesh. Although this was a prospective study, they used only a single measure of physical activity and only a single measure of depression, and they examined very few confounding and mediating variables. Given that the association between physical activity and mental health has been known for decades,[2],[3] their study breaks no new ground.
Curiously, although they sampled adults, they administered the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for Children. Besides being inappropriate for adults, this instrument has not been validated in the Indian population, and there is no support for the validity of the score used to define caseness in the Kangra sample. This scale has also been criticized for being non-specific, with ill-defined cut-off values.[4]
Further, by excluding persons with diagnosed mental health problems, the authors might have excluded depression, which was the very outcome that they sought to identify using their screening instrument.
Finally, they operationalized leisure-time physical activity and depression scores as categorical variables instead of as continuous variables; categorization of continuous data in statistical analysis has many limitations and should not be performed unless there are specific reasons to do so.[5],[6]
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
 References | |  |
| 1. | Singh M, Sharma P, Raj D, Sharma S, Kaushal A, Raina SK. Leisure time physical activity and risk of developing depression among the youth of Kangra district, Himachal Pradesh, India. Indian J Psychol Med 2018;40:426-32.  [ PUBMED] [Full text] |
| 2. | |
| 3. | Stephens T. Physical activity and mental health in the United States and Canada: Evidence from four population surveys. Prev Med 1988;17:35-47. |
| 4. | Olsson G, von Knorring AL. Depression among Swedish adolescents measured by the self-rating scale Center for Epidemiology Studies-Depression Child (CES-DC). Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 1997;6:81-7. |
| 5. | Streiner DL. Breaking up is hard to do: The heartbreak of dichotomizing continuous data. Can J Psychiatry 2002;47:262-6. |
| 6. | Andrade C. Categorizing continuous variables. Can J Psychiatry 2002;47:35-6. |
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