Saturday, March 23, 2024

What Causes Clinical Depression In The Brain

Can Depression Be Prevented

What Causes Depression and Low Mood? | Clinical Psychologist | Living With a Brain Tumour

You can help prevent depression by getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet and practicing regular self-care activities such as exercise, meditation and yoga.

If youve had depression before, you may be more likely to experience it again. If you have depression symptoms, get help. Care can help you feel better sooner.

More Than A Chemical Imbalance

For many years, researchers thought that the root cause of depression was a chemical imbalance in the brain. Depression was thought to occur because the brain didnt produce enough of certain chemicals , such as dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine, which are important for mood regulation.

Thats why depression is treated with antidepressants. Some antidepressants help the brain produce more of the neurotransmitters and others help these chemicals hang around a little longer inside your head.

Nowadays, the story is different.

Even though antidepressants immediately provide the brain with more neurotransmitters, it takes several weeks for the medications to work. This is a fact that has made more than one researcher scratch their heads. If the chemical imbalance is the problem, why doesnt depression disappear as soon as we fix the chemical imbalance?

Well, new research suggests that the chemical imbalance is a consequence of the more fundamental cause of depression. Its true that neurotransmitters play an important role in depression, but theyre probably not the core problem.

Today, researchers believe that the most probable cause of depression is a slow production of new brain cells and poor connections between brain cells, especially in the prefrontal cortex and in the Hippocampus. Among other things, these brain areas are responsible for mood regulation and information processing.

Simply put:

  • Connections between brain cells are broken
  • Can Clinical Depression Affect The Brain Function

    Depressed people often complain about problems with concentration and memory.

    But how does clinical depression affect the brain? And how can it lead to cognitive deficits?

    Depression involves changes in certain chemicals in your brain called neurotransmitters.

    Neurotransmitters send messages between brain cells and affect your moods and emotions.

    If you’re depressed, your brain may not be able to make enough of the neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, or it can’t use them effectively because of another problem with your brain chemistry.

    Insufficient levels of these neurotransmitters result in clinical depression, whereas increased levels of these neurotransmitters are associated with improvement in depression.

    Worried about if your depression could be damaging your brain or the possible effects on your brain function?

    This article outlines the ways clinical depression affects the brain so you have a better understanding of this mental illness.

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    The Science Of Depression

    There are over 350 million people who are affected on any given day by depression across the world, making it no wonder why this is a condition that is treated as a very serious medical illness. Unfortunately, depression is also one of the most difficult mental illnesses to treat, and this creates a tough situation for all of those afflicted with the condition. There is no blanket cure or treatment for depression, and what may work beautifully for one individual could be useless for the next, so its important that science begins taking a good look at the big picture when it comes to fighting this disease.

    In previous years, depression was often written off by medical science as simply an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, but research performed by modern science has come up with some rather interesting findings. One professor at the University of San Franciscos department of Health Sciences made the connection between depression and genetics, stating that depression could be a hereditary condition passed down from generation to generation through genes.

    How Is Depression Related To Anxiety

    TMS Therapy for Depression

    Depression and anxiety are considered two faces of the same coin. Both involve brooding over experiencein depression, things that happened in the past in anxiety, things that might happen in the future. Depression is also thought to result from sustained anxiety. More than half of all people with major depression also suffer from persistent anxiety. The two conditions share many symptoms, including insomnia, difficulty concentrating, negative thinking, and loss of appetite. Many treatments that relieve depression also relieve anxiety.

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    Brain Chemicals And Depression

    Researchers have suggested that for some people, having too little of certain substances in the brain could contribute to depression. Restoring the balance of brain chemicals could help alleviate symptomswhich is where the different classes of antidepressant medications may come in.

    Even with the help of medications that balance specific neurotransmitters in the brain, depression is a highly complex condition to treat. What proves to be an effective treatment for one person with depression may not work for someone else. Even something that has worked well for someone in the past may become less effective over time, or even stop working, for reasons researchers are still trying to understand.

    Researchers continue to try to understand the mechanisms of depression, including brain chemicals, in hopes of finding explanations for these complexities and developing more effective treatments. Depression is a multi-faceted condition, but having an awareness of brain chemistry can be useful for medical and mental health professionals, researchers, and many people who have depression.

    Depression Discussion Guide

    How Do Brain Networks Produce Major Depression

    Psychologically, hallmarks of major depression include the overemphasis placed on negative events and emotions , and the state of anhedonia . Together, these factors conspire to make the depressed subject feel as though everything is terrible and that nothing is really worth doing. Two important brain regions for this are the amygdala, for negative emotions, and the nucleus accumbens, for pleasure .

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    Do Adverse Experiences Always Result In Depression

    Research documents that there is a strong relationship between adverse experience in childhoodsuch as verbal or physical abuse or household dysfunction caused by a mentally ill parentand the lifetime risk of depression. Studies show that verbal abuse more than doubles the lifetime risk of depression. Adverse experiences are a significant source of stress.

    But whether they summon resources for successful coping or lead to despair depends in part on the situation and in part on the person. A child facing verbally or physically abusive treatment at home or school who has no means of escaping continuing injury is at elevated risk for developing depression. Situations may not be subject to changebut attitudes, interpretation, and meaning of experience are always under individual control and can confer resistance to depression and other disorders..

    A Long Road To Understanding Depression

    Clinical depression – major, post-partum, atypical, melancholic, persistent

    For years and years, doctors and researchers assumed that depression stemmed from an abnormality within these neurotransmitters, particularly serotonin or norepinephrine. But over time, these two neurotransmitters did not seem to account for the symptoms associated with major depression. As a result, doctors began to look elsewhere.

    The search proved fruitful. There are chemical messengers, which include glutamate and GABA, between the nerve cells in the higher centers of the brain involved in regulating mood and emotion, says John Krystal, MD, chair of Yales Department of Psychiatry, noting that these may be alternative causes for the symptoms of depression.

    These two are the brains most common neurotransmitters. They regulate how the brain changes and develops over a lifetime. When a person experiences chronic stress and anxiety, some of these connections between nerve cells break apart. As a result, communication between the affected cells becomes noisy, according to Dr. Krystal. And its this noise, along with the overall loss of connections, that many believe contribute to the biology of depression.

    There are clear differences between a healthy brain and a depressed brain, Dr. Katz says. And the exciting thing is, when you treat that depression effectively, the brain goes back to looking like a healthy brain.

    In this video, Drs. Katz and Krystal explain how depression affects the brain.

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    How Is Depression Diagnosed

    Depression can happen along with other medical conditions. These include heart disease, or cancer, as well as other mental health conditions. Early diagnosis and treatment is key to recovery.

    A diagnosis is made after a careful mental health exam and medical history done. This is usually done by a mental health professional.

    What Is The Role Of Inflammation In Depression

    There is growing evidence that depression gives rise to inflammation and the inflammatory response creates or exacerbates depression. Neuroscientists know that there is lots of crosstalk in the brain between neural circuits and inflammatory pathways. Negative thoughts are a source of psychological pain.

    Like all signs of injury, pain mobilizes various immune cells to help subdue the source, and that mobilization creates inflammation. Stress is known to activate an inflammatory response. The presence of inflammatory cells in the brain may be one reason many drug treatments for depression fail they do not target inflammation.

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    The Toll Depression Takes On The Body

    Depression is much more than just a brain disorder. It causes physical symptoms and can cause lasting damage to the body because of both direct effects and indirect complications of living with this mental illness. For instance, depression can change your appetite. It may trigger you to eat less and lose an unhealthy amount of weight. Or it can cause you to eat more, leading to weight gain and associated health conditions.

    You may also experience chronic pain as a result of depression. Unexplained aches and pains, like headaches, back pain, or joint tenderness, can be triggered by depression. Although not fully understood, it may be that depression makes you less tolerant of pain, so that everything just hurts more.

    Living with depression puts you at risk for serious physical health conditions, including heart disease and stroke. The reason for this may be that depression triggers an overproduction of clotting factors and variation in heart rate. These are both factors that can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

    Gastrointestinal distress is a potential complication of depression. The gut actually has a major connection to mood and mental health and is sometimes referred to as the bodys second brain. There are important receptors in the gut and an ecosystem of bacteria, which when out of whack can affect mood. If you are depressed, you may experience stomach aches, indigestion, nausea, cramps, or bloating.

    Depression Is Different From Sadness Or Grief/bereavement

    Severe depression linked with inflammation in the brain

    The death of a loved one, loss of a job or the ending of a relationship are difficult experiences for a person to endure. It is normal for feelings of sadness or grief to develop in response to such situations. Those experiencing loss often might describe themselves as being depressed.

    But being sad is not the same as having depression. The grieving process is natural and unique to each individual and shares some of the same features of depression. Both grief and depression may involve intense sadness and withdrawal from usual activities. They are also different in important ways:

    • In grief, painful feelings come in waves, often intermixed with positive memories of the deceased. In major depression, mood and/or interest are decreased for most of two weeks.
    • In grief, self-esteem is usually maintained. In major depression, feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing are common.
    • In grief, thoughts of death may surface when thinking of or fantasizing about joining the deceased loved one. In major depression, thoughts are focused on ending ones life due to feeling worthless or undeserving of living or being unable to cope with the pain of depression.

    Grief and depression can co-exist For some people, the death of a loved one, losing a job or being a victim of a physical assault or a major disaster can lead to depression. When grief and depression co-occur, the grief is more severe and lasts longer than grief without depression.

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    How Is Genetics Linked To The Risk Of Depression

    We know that depression can sometimes run in families. This suggests that there’s at least a partial genetic link to depression. Children, siblings, and parents of people with severe depression are somewhat more likely to have depression than are members of the general population. Multiple genes interacting with one another in special ways probably contribute to the various types of depression that run in families. Yet despite the evidence of a family link to depression, it is unlikely that there is a single “depression” gene, but rather, many genes that each contribute small effects toward depression when they interact with the environment.

    How Is Depression Syndrome Diagnosed

    Everyone may feel sad or down from time to time. However, clinical depression has more intense symptoms that last two weeks or longer.

    To determine whether you have clinical depression, your healthcare provider will ask questions. You may complete a questionnaire and provide a family history. Your healthcare provider may also perform an exam or order lab tests to see if you have another medical condition.

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    What Causes Depression In The Brain

    If you struggle with depression, youve probably heard its caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain. While this is technically correct, the whole picture is a bit more complex. Theres no question that the chemicals in your brain play an important role, but its not as simple as one of those chemicals being too high or too low.

    Over the last 20 years, scientists and mental health experts have learned so much more about the causes of depression. In this post, were going to break down the causes of depression in the brain so you can get a better understanding of your mental health.

    What Is Major Depression

    How Depression Affects The Brain – Yale Medicine Explains

    Major depression, or major depressive disorder, is a mood disorder and mental illness that causes significantly and persistently low moods. More than just feeling down for a day or two, depression causes a bad mood that you cant shake for weeks. Some of the key symptoms and signs of depression are:

    • Persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness
    • Loss of interest in activities you normally enjoy
    • Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much
    • Weight gain or weight loss
    • Extreme fatigue
    • Anxiety, restlessness, frustration, or irritability
    • Feeling worthless, guilty, or ashamed
    • Difficulty concentrating, making decisions, or remembering
    • Thoughts of suicide and death

    You may be diagnosed with depression if you have some of these symptoms for a couple weeks or longer, if they are severe enough to disrupt your normal functioning, and if they cannot be explained by substance abuse, medications, or an illness.

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    Nutrients: The Link Between Food & Mood

    Food is more than energy for the brain. It also provides the building blocks for neurotransmitters and brain cells, as well as antioxidants to protect against inflammation. Not surprisingly, there is a growing body of evidence supporting a link between what we eat and our mental health. A review of the medical literature found that seafood, leafy greens, and cruciferous vegetables were the most helpful in preventing and recovering from depression.

    Happy Or Sad: The Chemistry Behind Depression

    Depression is a serious condition that negatively affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. According to a recent study more than 350 million people are affected by depression, making it one of the most frequent causes of disability and common disorders that affect humans worldwide.

    What causes depression?

    During the last decade, increased access to brain imaging technology has allowed neuroscientists and hospital clinicians to view the brain in detail, measure neural activity, and quantify neurotransmitter levels. Such studies have revealed many clues regarding the underlying contributing factors of depression and the pathophysiology of this disease.

    Serotonin: the happy neurotransmitter

    Various animal models have demonstrated that chronic stress causes low serotonin levels in the brain. In patients, low brain serotonin activity correlates with a higher risk for more violent attempted and successful suicides. Serotonin levels have also been implicated in seasonal affective disorder .

    According to a recent study, sunlight keeps serotonin levels high by decreasing serotonin transporter activity. Because serotonin-releasing neurons use SERT to recapture released serotonin, limiting SERT activity increases serotonin-dependent activity and downstream neuronal signaling. For this reason, patients afflicted with SAD experience increased SERT levels as nights lengthen, thereby diminishing active serotonin levels while increasing the risk of depression.

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    The Mediating Role Of Monoamines

    Most of the serotonergic, noradrenergic and dopaminergic neurons are locatedin midbrain and brainstem nuclei and project to large areas of the entirebrain. This anatomy suggests that monoaminergic systems are involved in theregulation of a broad range of brain functions, including mood, attention,reward processing, sleep, appetite, and cognition. Almost every compound thatinhibits monoamine reuptake, leading to an increased concentration of monoaminesin the synaptic cleft, has been proven to be a clinically effective antidepressant 19. Inhibiting the enzyme monoamine oxidase,which induces an increased availability of monoamines in presynaptic neurons,also has antidepressant effects. These observations led to the pharmacologicallymost relevant theory of depression, referred to as the monoamine-deficiencyhypothesis.

    The monoamine-deficiency theory posits that the underlying pathophysiologicalbasis of depression is a depletion of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrineor dopamine in the central nervous system.

    Stress Hormones And Cytokines

    13 common signs and symptoms of depression

    Corticotropin-releasing hormone is released from the hypothalamusin response to the perception of psychological stress by cortical brain regions.This hormone induces the secretion of pituitary corticotropin, which stimulatesthe adrenal gland to release cortisol into the plasma. The physiologic responseto stress is partly gender-specific: women show generally greater stress responsivenessthan men, which is consistent with the greater incidence of major depressionin women 17. Moreover, men show greatercortisol responses to achievement challenges, whereas women show greater cortisolresponses to social rejection challenges 18.

    Although MDD is considered as a stress disorder, most subjects treatedfor MDD have no evidence of dysfunctions of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenalaxis 19. However, some subjectswith MDD do show abnormalities of that axis and of the extrahypothalamic CRHsystem 20. Altered stress hormone secretionappeared to be most prominent in depressed subjects with a history of childhoodtrauma 21. Elevated cortisol may actas a mediator between major depression and its physical long-term consequencessuch as coronary heart disease, type II diabetes, and osteoporosis 22.

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