Skip to content

Depression Tips and Guides

Comprehensive resources on depression, causes and how it affects a person. Provided tips and guides on how to live a better life even when suffering from depression and anxiety.

What causes depression and other mood disorders?

Although depression is a complex illness with many factors playing a role in its development, current scientific evidence indicates that the fundamental problem is a hereditary and biological one. We are not sure of the exact nature of the problem, but it is clear that depression and bipolar illness are due to defects in brain biochemistry and structure, and perhaps the workings of the glandular and immune systems as well.

In this sense, they are not mental illnesses (sicknesses of the mind) but physical illnesses of the brain. With advances in our understanding of the biochemical problems involved in mood disorders, the term mental illness will eventually be discarded.

Scientific evidence for the genetic, biochemical, and physical basis of depression comes from several sources:

Mood disordersIdentical-Twin Studies

  • These show that when identical twins (who have the same genetic makeup) are reared apart and one twin has clinical depression, the other twin is more likely to develop depression than would be expected by chance alone.

Adoption Studies

  • Individuals with depressed parents or other relatives have been found to develop depression more frequently than would be expected by chance alone even if they are brought up by nondepressed adoptive parents.

Biochemical Studies

  • Depressed individuals have some similar abnormalities in brain biochemistry.

Neuroimaging Studies

  • Pictures of brain structure and metabolism of people with depression show some similarities. (Imaging techniques may eventually help doctors make a diagnosis in individual patients.)

Medication Response Studies

  • The majority of people with symptoms of depression respond to medications believed to correct specific brain biochemical imbalances.

This is not to say that the environment an individual was raised in or later unfortunate life circumstances play no role in mood disorders. The current thinking is that the genetic and biochemical dysfunctions in depression are triggered by life events, including problems in the family in which a depressed individual grew up. If a person with a genetic vulnerability to depression is raised by abusive alcoholic parents, for instance, she is more likely to develop depression than is a genetically vulnerabe individual brought up in a stable home. Someone suffering from depression can usually come up with good reasons for his or her emotional pain. The person might be able to point to a rotten childhood or current problems to explain his troubled mood. But these reasons alone often do not explain why someone would go from feeling depressed to developing the many symptoms characteristic of depressive illness. Many people go through profoundly painful traumas of all kinds and do not end up with symptoms of depressive illness.

The prospective patient needs to keep in mind that once a depressive illness takes hold, it can develop a life of its own, regardless of the events that triggered it. Even when depressive illness has clearly been set off by negative events, medical treatment may be needed to help resolve it.

A few studies have suggested that at least some cases of serious depression could be caused by viruses, including a virus called the Borna virus. A large percentage of people with bipolar disorder were born in the winter at the height of cold and flu season. The antiviral drug amantadine/Symmetrel has reportedly helped some patients with clinical depression. In addition to being an antiviral drug, however, amantadine also enhances the effectiveness of a neurotransmitter that may be implicated in depression, so its effectiveness could have as much to do with this action as with its antiviral action.

Categories

  • About Depression
  • About Depression Treatment
  • Depression Medication
  • Depression Questions
  • Depression Risk Prevention
  • Depression Tips and Guide
  • Depression Treatment
  • Living With Depression
  • What Causes Depression

Recent Posts

  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder
  • What makes depression so painful?
  • Can medical illnesses cause symptoms of depression?
  • What causes depression and other mood disorders?
  • What is manic-depressive illness?
  • What is dysthymia disorder?
  • Painless Medical Alternative For Depression
  • Are Depression and Obesity Related
  • Are depression and anxiety linked
  • Are Manic Depression and Bipolar The Same
Copyright © www.AllDepressionTips.com - All Rights Reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
This website uses cookiesRead More. CLOSE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.

SAVE & ACCEPT