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BrainStuff: What Do We Know (and Not Know) About Depression?
Depression is a common condition, and highly treatable, but there's still a lot we don't understand about how it works. Learn about depression's probable causes, usual symptoms, and effective treatments in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/depression/facts/depression.htm
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- Broadcast on:
- 25 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
This episode is brought to you by Raylar cariprazine. So let's talk about something important for a second. Did you know that a large study showed that 50% of adults with depression still had unresolved depressive symptoms with their first antidepressant? If you're taking an antidepressant and still have unresolved depressive symptoms, ask your healthcare provider of an add-on treatment like Raylar could help give your antidepressant a lift. Raylar is a prescription medication approved for use with antidepressant medicines to treat major depressive disorder, MDD in adults. Adding Raylar to an antidepressant is clinically proven to help relieve overall depression symptoms better than an antidepressant alone. The results may vary. Raylar is a once-daily pill taken with or without food. Raylar is not approved in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis or for people under 18. Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke, report unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. Antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults, report fever, stiff muscles, or confusion as these may be life-threatening or uncontrolled muscle movements which may be permanent. High blood sugar which can lead to coma or death, weight gain and high cholesterol may occur. Difficulty moving, tremors, slow or uncontrolled body movements, restlessness, feeling like you need to move around, nausea, constipation, insomnia, dizziness, increased appetite, and fatigue are common side effects. Side effects may not appear for several weeks. For a lift and relief, ask about adding Raylar. V-R-A-Y-L-A-R. Visit raylar.com or call 1-877-6-raylar to learn more. Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Volgobon here. Wanted to let you know at the top here that we're talking about mental health today, so if you're not up for that, take care of yourself. But okay, a week as a society don't talk enough about mental health. It's totally normal for all of us to find ourselves feeling down or worried sometimes. With the state of the world around us, I'd think it was a little strange if you never did. But what about if those feelings persist? Grow to be overwhelming. Maybe affect your work or studies or relationships or maybe make it feel difficult to get anything done. That might be depression. And just like any other health issue, depression can manifest differently in each of us, a varying in severity in symptoms. And therefore, solutions for it can vary too. Also, as with many things about our weird and wondrous human bodies, researchers aren't entirely sure how depression works. Today, let's talk about what we do and don't know about this branch of mental health. But first off, depression is a broad term. Health professionals can diagnose different flavors of depressive conditions based on a person's age, when and how and how frequently symptoms appear, and whether the person has any other mental or physical health issues going on. The definition common to all of these is a measure of sadness, emptiness, or irritability that impedes your capacity to function. More specific symptoms can include loss of interest in usual activities, a withdrawal from family or friends, feelings of guilt, hopelessness, helplessness, or worthlessness, changes in sleeping habits like being unable to sleep or sleeping too much, fatigue and lethargy, or hyperactivity and restlessness, changes in eating habits leading to weight loss or weight gain, indecision, difficulty concentrating or forgetfulness, persistent pains that don't respond to treatment like headaches, stomach aches, or digestive problems, a worsening of other conditions like arthritis or diabetes, and/or thoughts or actions towards self-harm or death. That's a lot of symptoms and a bunch of contradictory ones. And no two people will have the same ones to the same levels of severity. But if someone experiences five or more of these symptoms for over two weeks, that might be diagnosed as major depressive disorder. If someone experiences just a couple of them, but for a couple of years running, that might be what's called persistent depressive disorder. There are also specifications that can help diagnose forms of depression and someone going through prolonged grief or someone who has particular trouble the week before their menstrual cycle or during certain seasons of the year, or someone with symptoms tied to another medical condition or a child or adolescent who's struggling. You can experience depression once in a lifetime brought on by a single stressful event or it can recur throughout your life. There is no single cause for depression, although research does suggest four factors from which it likely results, often in combination, genetic, biochemical, psychological, and environmental. Scientists haven't found a gene for depression, and but they have seen evidence based on family histories suggesting that there may be a genetic link. Children of people with major depressive disorder are more likely to experience depression than the general population. Something in the way those children are raised could have an influence, but research has shown that social and family environmental factors are less important than genetic ones. However, because depression also occurs in individuals without family histories of the condition, we continue to study additional factors. Other research with magnetic resonance imaging has revealed differences in the brains of people with depressive conditions. People with depression have abnormal levels of some neurotransmitters, which are chemical messengers between cells in the brain and between the nervous system and other cells in the body. Having enough of these chemical messengers helps us process and regulate our mood and memory and behavior in complicated ways that we don't entirely understand yet. Researchers have honed in on three in particular, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Psychological factors also come into play. People with certain characteristics such as pessimism and low self-esteem have a tendency to develop depression. And stressful happenings such as relationship changes, illness, financial problems, or any major life event like a move or a job change can trigger a depressive event. Again, it's not straightforward or simple. The onset of depression frequently occurs from a combination of these causes. Depression is highly treatable, but one of the complications of depression is that you don't always want to talk to anyone or that you feel guilty about feeling sad. Wrapped up in all this, there's still some misplaced social stigma about mental health, which is why I'm doing this episode. It's just part of our health. There shouldn't be any shame in it. The first step toward getting help is to talk to a health professional. If you have a primary doctor, a family doctor, or other medical caregiver who you trust, they're a great place to start. Though, if you don't, and there are lots of online services and local organizations that are designed to get you on a path to diagnosis and treatment. There's no easy tests like a blood panel or x-ray. However, doctors may sometimes order lab tests for things like thyroid or heart or brain conditions to make sure that no more immediately serious physical disease is causing depression type symptoms that would require its own treatment. Generally, a health professional will ask you about your and your family's medical history. Then they'll talk with you about your physical and social and psychological symptoms and your mood, determining what symptoms are present, when they began and your general state of mind. They might use a written or spoken diagnostic questionnaire. Researchers have come up with a bunch of different ones that can quickly, easily and accurately score how serious a person's symptoms are, since those symptoms can be difficult to self-report. Once you have a diagnosis, there are lots of different treatment options. Because mental health is highly individual, what works for any given person can vary, and it can take some time to determine what works for you. But over 80% of people who are treated experience improvement. Effective and common treatments for major and chronic depression are antidepressant medications to relieve symptoms and talk therapy to learn effective coping methods, or a combination of the two. Antidepressant medications help to normalize levels of those mood-regulating neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain. The most common medications these days, because they tend to be pretty effective and not have too many negative side effects, are SSRIs. That stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Basically, they work by preventing your body from reabsorbing a molecule of serotonin after it's transmitted a message. So that serotonin molecule can keep on keeping on in your brain. There are other reuptake inhibitors for norepinephrine and dopamine, and other antidepressants that work in yet other ways. One type of medication may work better than another from person to person, and sometimes it takes a few tries to find one or a combination that works well. Talk therapy, also known as psychotherapy, can be used in conjunction with medication or solo. It involves talking through symptoms, behaviors, and situations with a mental health professional. There are two main types most common today. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is meant to teach you new ways of thinking and behaving, and interpersonal therapy, or IPT, is meant to help you understand and work on personal relationships and social behaviors that may be contributing to your depression. Just as with medication-based treatments can take a few tries to find a talk therapist or a course of therapy that works for you. For a science podcast, all of this is infuriatingly in specific, just wibbly wobbly brainy-wainy. Lots more research is being done into the complex soup of conditions that creates our mental health. Hopefully in the future, we'll have more precise answers. In the meanwhile, if you're worried about yourself or a loved one, please remember that even with everything we don't know, depression is real and clinical and highly treatable. It can get better, and there is nothing wrong needing a little help. (upbeat music) Today's episode is based on the article, "How Depression Works" on howstuffworks.com, written by Maria Tremarki. BrainStuff is production by HeartRadio in partnership with howstuffworks.com and is produced by Tyler Clang. For more podcasts from MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) This episode is brought to you by Raylar, Cariprazine. So let's talk about something important for a second. Did you know that a large study showed that 50% of adults with depression still had unresolved depressive symptoms with their first antidepressant? If you're taking an antidepressant and still have unresolved depressive symptoms, ask your healthcare provider of an add-on treatment, like Raylar, could help give your antidepressant a lift. Raylar is a prescription medication approved for use with antidepressant medicines to treat major depressive disorder, MDD, and adults. Adding Raylar to an antidepressant is clinically proven to help relieve overall depression symptoms better than an antidepressant alone. The results may vary. Raylar is a once daily pill taken with or without food. Raylar is not approved in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis or for people under 18. Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Report unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. Antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. Report fever, stiff muscles, or confusion as these may be life-threatening or uncontrolled muscle movements which may be permanent. High blood sugar which can lead to coma or death, weight gain, and high cholesterol may occur. Difficulty moving, tremors, slow, or uncontrolled body movements, restlessness feeling like you need to move around, nausea, constipation, insomnia, dizziness, increased appetite, and fatigue are common side effects. Side effects may not appear for several weeks. For a lift and relief, ask about adding Raylar. V-R-A-Y-L-A-R. Visit raylar.com or call 1-877-6-raylar to learn more.