Bouldering may treat depression

Besides building muscles and endurance, bouldering, which involves climbing rocks or walls to a moderate height without ropes or a harness, may also treat symptoms of depression, suggests new research.

"Bouldering, in many ways, is a positive physical activity," said Eva-Maria Stelzer, one of the researchers and a doctoral student of psychology at University of Arizona in the US.

Because many people who are depressed deal with isolation, bouldering as a treatment could bolster physical activity and be used as a social tool allowing people to interact with one another, Stelzer said.

"Bouldering not only has strong mental components, but it is accessible at different levels so that people of all levels of physical health are able to participate," she added.

"Since rumination is one of the biggest problems for depressed individuals, we had the idea that bouldering could be a good intervention for that," Katharina Luttenberger of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany added.

Given the positive results, the team believes that bouldering may be used to complement traditional care for clinical depression.