Are Anxiety And Depression Linked

Treatment For Anxiety And Depression At High Focus Centers

At High Focus Centers, our clinicians, therapists, and staff work closely with individuals living with a range of mental health disorders including anxiety and depression. Contact us today to learn more about our adult and teen mental health treatment programs. Get in touch and have a friendly, non-judgmental conversation with our team. Start your path to a healthier life today!

The Relationship Between Depression And Anxiety

Depression and anxiety are two of the most common mental health conditions. In the year 2017, there were 264 million people living with depression and 284 million living with anxiety disorders globally. There are distinct symptoms for each of these conditions, but there is also a link between them. Here we provide an overview of the symptoms of depression and anxiety, and how they influence each other.

Suffering From Anxiety Stress Or Depression Beyond Your Separation

Modern living and the experience of separation sometimes feels incredibly stressful and we can all give ourselves a hard time and worry excessively. In order for the modern form of humans to survive 200,000 years we have needed to be ready for action depending on what we were faced with. Our amygdala, the internal alarm system that alerts us to present and imminent dangers, is still very reactive today as we are descendants of people who had very finely tuned and responsive alarm systems.

Modern living may be less predatory but we still have to deal with a huge number of ‘triggers’ and pressures, particularly when going through the emotional process of separation or divorce. We may see our former partner as the ‘enemy’due to the relationship breakdown, the conflicts of the past or present and possibly our experience of adversarial court proceedings. We may have categorised our ex as a threat.

If suffering from anxiety and insomnia, seeking professional support will alleviate the trauma and stress and enable us to feel stronger and believe in ourselves again. Suffering in silence only exacerbates the tendency of our default ‘alarm’ system to continue to tripwire. This increases cortisol levels – a steroid hormone released in response to stress – causing long-term harm such as increased insomnia, depression, feeling frazzled and depleting our immune system when ‘stacking’ up.

Also Check: Is There Pre Partum Depression

How Do You Treat Depression And Anxiety

It can be harder for doctors to diagnose and treat depression and anxiety when they happen together. That’s why it’s important to tell your doctor about all of your symptoms.

The treatment for both anxiety and depression involves talk therapy, medication, or a combination of the two. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the main talk therapies. It teaches you how to think and behave differently to stop triggering your anxiety or depression.

Antidepressants are medicines that treat depression. They change the balance of chemicals in your brain to improve your mood. Anti-anxiety drugs, antidepressants, and beta-blockers are treatments for anxiety.

The sooner you start treatment, the more likely it will help you. Let your doctor know if the treatment you’re on doesn’t relieve your symptoms or if it causes side effects. It may take a few tries to find the treatment that works best for you.

Show Sources

Reach Out To Loved Ones

Strong relationships can go a long way toward improving your outlook and emotional well-being when you live with mental health conditions.

Friends and family can:

• provide encouragement and emotional support
• join you in hobbies or activities that offer a positive distraction
• offer rides, grocery runs, and other more tangible forms of support when you have trouble getting things done

Simply knowing you have someone you trust in your life can often help you feel less alone, whether you actually want to talk about your symptoms or not.

Treating co-occurring depression and anxiety can sometimes be more complicated than treating one condition alone. Even when you get treatment for one condition, some symptoms might persist or seem to play off the others.

For example:

• You cant stop worrying about all the things going wrong in your life, or thinking about the ways things could get worse. These fears eventually drain your energy and motivation to keep trying, leaving you feeling low and hopeless.
• Social anxiety keeps you from connecting with people in the ways youd like. You want to make new friends but generally end up avoiding interactions instead. This leaves you feeling lonely, sad, and guilty, especially when thinking of those missed opportunities, but helpless to do anything differently.

A mental health care professional may recommend combining treatment approaches, since what helps ease depression symptoms may not always relieve anxiety symptoms, and vice versa.

Also Check: How To See Depression In Others

Therapy For Anxiety And Depression

There are many different types of therapy that can be used to treat anxiety or depression alone. When both disorders are present, you may need to use a variety of these methods. Here are some types of therapy that work well for anxiety and depression:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy
• Acceptance and commitment therapy
• Psychoanalytic therapy
• Interpersonal therapy

There are also therapies designed for anxiety, such as exposure therapy, and techniques that are effective for depression, like behavioral activation. You may find it helpful to incorporate some extra therapeutic techniques into your treatment plan.

Anxiety Vs Depression: Treatment

Fortunately anxiety and depression are both treatable. Studies have shown that those willing to commit to a treatment will find their conditions will become less or better still cured.

• Both anxiety and depression change your way of thinking, so at times there may be thoughts that the condition is untreatable, despite evidence showing otherwise.
• There is no one size fits all approach to treating anxiety and depression. You may have to try different treatment before finding one that is right for you. You need to be aware of this and try not to feel disappointed or quit treatment if one isn’t suitable for you
• Anxiety and depression require long term treatments. They won’t have immediate results, because it will involve changing how you see the world and processing this information.
• Both will have their setbacks. As recovery is a process, it may take time to feel ânormalâ again. Sometimes people will begin to feel alot better but they may still experience sporadic depressive or anxious episodes. Because the two conditions cause negative thinking, these setbacks can lead to feelings of hopelessness that cause people to quit treatments. Remember setbacks are part of recovery.
• Always seek professional help either from your doctor or a therapist.

Anxiety and depression are treatable, but those treatments can take time so it is important that you are committed to the therapy, treatment or both that is suitable for you.

Was this article helpful?

Also Check: How To Uplift Someone With Depression

Are They The Same Thing

The short answer is no. The medium answer is yes, sort of. For the long answer, read the rest of the article.

You sometimes see them described as:

“Two sides of the same coin.”

And others describe it as:

“Depression is an obsession with the past. Anxiety is an obsession with the future.”

So, they are not the same thing. However, they are closely linked. It is worth asking what exactly we mean by the same thing. Learning the skills to overcome one with dramatically help you in coping with the other, for example.

Below, I will break down each area and compare the two.

Mental Health Conditions: Depression And Anxiety

Depression is more than just feeling down or having a bad day. When a sad mood lasts for a long time and interferes with normal, everyday functioning, you may be depressed. Symptoms of depression include:1

• Feeling sad or anxious often or all the time
• Not wanting to do activities that used to be fun
• Feeling irritable easily frustrated or restless
• Having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep
• Waking up too early or sleeping too much
• Eating more or less than usual or having no appetite
• Experiencing aches, pains, headaches, or stomach problems that do not improve with treatment
• Having trouble concentrating, remembering details, or making decisions
• Feeling tired even after sleeping well
• Feeling guilty, worthless, or helpless
• Thinking about suicide or hurting yourself

The following information is not intended to provide a medical diagnosis of major depression and cannot take the place of seeing a mental health professional. If you think you are depressed talk with your doctor or a mental health professional immediately. This is especially important if your symptoms are getting worse or affecting your daily activities.

The exact cause of depression is unknown. It may be caused by a combination of genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors.2 Everyone is different but the following factors may increase a persons chances of becoming depressed:1

Also Check: Treatment Plan For Persistent Depressive Disorder

Symptoms Of Anxiety In Men

Anxiety is more than having sweaty palms and butterflies in your stomach. Symptoms of anxiety can include ongoing feelings of worry, fear and impending doom that are so severe they interfere with your ability to work, maintain relationships and get a decent nights sleep. Physical signs of anxiety may include:

• pounding or racing heart

• thinking about death or suicide.

Does Anxiety Cause Depression

It depends. If your anxiety is a temporary emotional response, its not likely it may lead to symptoms of depression.

But if you notice that your signs of anxiety become a recurring experience, you may be living with an anxiety disorder. In this case, suggests that its possible that anxiety leads to depression, or makes the existing symptoms of depression feel worse.

In that case, depression may be a side effect of anxiety.

Heres why and how the untreated effects of anxiety may cause depression symptoms to develop:

Don’t Miss: What Happens To Your Body When You Are Depressed

Mental Markers Of Depression

People with depression may:

• Be hopeless, assuming that nothing positive will happen in the future for themselves, for others, or for the world
• Believe it is not worth trying to think or feel differently, because of this hopelessness
• Feel worthless, as if who they are or what they do is not valuable
• Think about death due to a persistent belief that life is not worth living or that the individual is a burden on others. In cases of moderate to severe depression, more specific suicidal thoughts can be present.

• Feel hopeless about themselves, others, the world

• Believe it is not worth trying

• Feel worthless

• Think about death due to a persistent belief that life is not worth living

In major depressive disorder , these types of thoughts are persistent most of the day and more days than not for weeks on end. If a person vacillates between a very low and very high mood state, then a diagnosis of bipolar disorder may apply. For any variant of a mood disorder, the low mood state is likely to be characterized by the type of thinking described above.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.

For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database.

Summary Of Main Findings

During the last decade, research regarding the relationship of burnout and depression, and burnout and anxiety, has grown. As we observed from our database search on the studies that measure the aforementioned relationships, the research in this field of area has increased in recent years, with the majority of the studies being conducted during the last year . The interest on clarifying these relationships appears to be growing stronger and by conducting the present meta-analysis we wanted to clarify whether there is an overlap between burnout and depression, and an overlap between burnout and anxiety. Overall, burnout research is growingparticularly when it comes to small-scale occupational studies, but the research tends to be varied, and applies a range of different instruments to measure burnout . It is possible that employees who have been diagnosed with a depressive and/or an anxiety disorder might also suffer from burnout . Indicatively, Maske et al. found that 59% of individuals who have been diagnosed with burnout they were also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, 58% with an affective disorder, i.e., depression or a depressive episode and 27% with a somatoform disorder. In other words, the similarities between burnout and depression and burnout and anxiety might lead to false diagnosis or it is possible that burnout might be overlooked on the account of these similarities, resulting in false treatments of the individuals who suffer from it.

Read Also: Can Depression Cause Constant Nausea

Study Selection And Characteristics

Tables 1, 2 provide a detailed summary of all the studies that were included in the meta-analysis for both depression and anxiety, respectively. In total 101 studies were included in this review 67 studies for burnout and depression and 34 studies for burnout and anxiety. Table 3 provides a list of all the questionnaires used in the studies included in the meta-analysis .

Table 1. Studies measuring burnout and depression included in the meta-analysis .

Table 2. Studies measuring burnout and anxiety included in the meta-analysis .

Table 3. Questionnaires used for measuring burnout, depression and anxiety in the studies included in the meta-analysis.

Concerning the publication year of the studies about burnout and depression, 43.3% of them were published during 2018 , followed by 13.4% of them which were published in 2016 and 11.9% in 2015 7.5% of the studies were published in 2014, 5.6% in 2017, 4.5% in 2012, 15.6% were published in each of the following years: 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2013 , and 1.5% in 2009. In relation to publication year of the studies about burnout and anxiety, 52.9% were published in 2018 , 11.8% studies were published in 2015, 11.8% in 2016, 5.8% in 2014 and 5.8% 2017 11.6% were published during the years of 2007, 2010, 2011, and 2012 .

Anxiety And Depression Can Co

When people experience both anxiety and depression, one disorder is often the main one or the primary problem. However, anxiety and depression often interact or influence each other.

For example, someone who feels anxious a lot of the time, may start to feel quite down and hopeless, and these feelings may develop into depression.

Similarly, when someone is feeling low and depressed, and perhaps they are really struggling with low energy or motivation, this can lead to worries about coping with everyday activities. People may become quite anxious about work, seeing their friends, or trying new things.

Another important thing to know is that it is really common to experience other difficulties alongside the anxiety and depression. Many people also have difficulties with drug and alcohol use, and lots of people experience physical health problems such as high blood pressure and other heart conditions, diabetes and pain disorders. And these additional problems can interact with the anxiety and depression, and make it harder for the person to get feel better.

Read Also: How To Help A Child With Depression

Studies Retrieved For The Meta

As it regards the number of records that were originally identified, concerning burnout, and depression a total of 3,884 records were found. After refining the search results, 3,026 records were screened, 21 of them were excluded as they were not full-texts, 17 were excluded due to language restrictions , and 2,921 because they didn’t fit the inclusion criteria or were excluded because the appropriate statistics were not provided. In total 67 papers were included in the meta-analysis .

Concerning burnout and anxiety, 2,309 records were identified. After refining the results, 2,019 available records were screened 10 of them were excluded due to non-use of the English language, 5 were not full-texts and 1,970 were excluded because they didn’t fit the inclusion criteria or because the appropriate statistics were not provided. In total 34 papers were eligible for the meta-analysis .

Supporting Someone With Anxiety Or Depression

There are ways that you can help someone with anxiety or depression. It may be helpful to:

• let them know if youve noticed a change in their behaviour
• spend time talking about their experiences and let them know youre there to listen without being judgmental
• help them to get information from a website, library or community health centre
• suggest they go to a doctor or health professional, and help them to make an appointment
• offer to go with them to their appointment and follow up with them afterwards
• encourage them to get enough sleep, to exercise and to eat well
• encourage family and friends to invite them out and keep in touch, but dont pressure them to participate in activities
• contact a doctor or hospital if they become a threat to themselves or others.

It is unhelpful to:

• put pressure on them by telling them to snap out of it or get their act together
• stay away or avoid them
• tell them they just need to stay busy or get out more
• pressure them to party more or wipe out how theyre feeling with drugs and alcohol
• assume the problem will just go away.

If you or someone you know needs support, talk to a doctor or other health professional about getting appropriate treatment.

Read Also: Can Depression Run In Your Family

What Is An Anxiety Disorder

Although anxiety is not always present in depressive disorders, most of the time it lurks beneath the surface. But true depression differs from an anxiety disorder in that a depressed mood is typically its most obvious symptom, whereas anxiety is the primary sign of an authentic anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorders include:

• Social anxiety disorder

Previously, two other conditions — obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder — had been classified by the American Psychiatric Association as being subtypes of anxiety disorders. However, in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , each of these conditions is now classified as its own separate type of disorder.

Anxiety disorders affect women twice as frequently as they do men. And many studies show that people with depression often experience symptoms of an anxiety disorder.

An anxiety disorder that’s left untreated can cause unnecessary suffering and impairment for both the person who has one and the person’s family.