Objective To assess the comparative effectiveness of exercise, antidepressants and their combination for alleviating depressive symptoms in adults with non-severe depression.
Design Systematic review and network meta-analysis.
Data sources Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Scopus and SportDiscus.
Eligibility criteria Randomised controlled trials (1990–present) that examined the effectiveness of an exercise, antidepressant or combination intervention against either treatment alone or a control/placebo condition in adults with non-severe depression.
Study selection and analysis Risk of bias, indirectness and the overall confidence in the network were assessed by two independent investigators. A frequentist network meta-analysis was performed to examine postintervention differences in depressive symptom severity between groups. Intervention drop-out was assessed as a measure of treatment acceptability.
Results Twenty-one randomised controlled trials (n=2551) with 25 comparisons were…