Depression

“At first I didn’t understand what was going on…sometimes I did not want to be around people, or do anything.  I experienced ups and downs - sometimes depression would grab a hold of me, other times I was simply anxious about anything and everything.” This is an excerpt from a personal story posted by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA). If you have been diagnosed with depression, you can likely relate to feelings of emptiness, hopelessness, fatigue or insomnia, and perpetual negativity that seems to plague your thoughts. Depression takes hold of about 300 million people around the world, and 16.2 million adults within the United States alone. When it comes to recovery, it often depends on the individual and what works best for them. For some, the medications alone provide a major relief. For others, a combination of medication and psychotherapy gives them a sense of clarity while they work through deep-rooted issues, and yet for others, the journey to finding the right treatment “fit” still ensues. Neurofeedback therapy is one component of mental illness and addiction recovery that is becoming more widely used. This form of therapy in particular shows real-time brain activity so that you can see what’s going on – ultimately, you learn tools for self-regulating by watching and adjusting your own brain functioning. Previous research has shown neurofeedback therapy as a positive influence on those with depression. For instance, a 2014 review published in the journal Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience emphasizes the flexibility and noninvasiveness of neurofeedback therapy, making these positive components for those wanting something quite painless. Lynda Thompson, PhD and director of a neurofeedback institute in Canada, told the American Psychological Association (APA) that neurofeedback therapy works like a video game – where children and adults can move through the game only if they are calm and focused. She stated, “The method rewards the healthier brainwave patterns.” For those with depression, neurofeedback therapy could be a great component to add to a treatment regime, as it can help train a person to self-regulate their own brain waves and behavioral strategies as they learn what works best for them. If you haven’t already, speak with a professional from a reputable treatment center to learn more about this option. With technology advancing the realm of mental illness and addiction recovery, more and more options are becoming available. Recovery is possible.

Depression affects a lot of us – 350 million of us, to be exact. The symptoms of depression can leave us feeling hopeless, lonely, empty, and fatigued, to name a few. During those times where we feel depressed, it’s incredibly important to take steps towards easing that depression so that we can feel more calm, relaxed, and content. Thankfully, there are several activities that one can do to help alleviate the symptoms of depression:

This article discusses matter of suicide. If you are seriously considering suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255. Your life matters. Call now. People are experiencing depression more than ever before, and this draws concern to our neighbors, friends, and loved ones. Depression can be hidden, as many people do not seek out help or rely on their close friends and family to help them through troubling times. Feelings of doubt, hopelessness, unworthiness, guilt, and self-hatred means that our loved ones may be suffering without us knowing. As scary as this sounds, it’s important to recognize the signs of suicidal thoughts so that we can try to save our loved ones before it’s too late. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the following are signs your loved one may need help immediately: If your loved one is talking about:

For anyone who has experienced depression, the symptoms can be debilitating. Having a lack of enjoyment in activities, isolation, and feeling hopeless are just a few characteristics of depression and can make a person feel defeated. Luckily, there are so many successful tools that can be used to assist with the devastating effects of depression, with acupuncture being one of them. Acupuncture is a form of traditional Chinese medicine that involves a doctor placing small needles into the body to alleviate pain. Acupuncture is ideally supposed to help balance the energy pathways throughout the body – a process that has been known to help alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression. This technique is said to increase function and evoke the body’s natural healing responses through physiological systems. Acupuncture could be a wonderful way for a person with depression to relieve some of their stress and pain. Here is what one can expect after scheduling an appointment for acupuncture:

Bipolar disorder is also known as manic-depressive illness. It was coined by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin who coined manic-depressive psychosis as an episodic disorder with no permanent brain damage. It is more common to use the term bipolar disorder than manic-depressive as the former is less stigmatizing towards others. There are still some psychiatrists and other people who use the term manic-depressive if that term displays the nature of the disorder accurately. Bipolar disorder causes unusual shifts in energy, mood, activity, and doing day to day tasks. There are moments where you could be extremely upbeat, thrilled, energized (manic), very sad, gloomy, and hopeless periods (hypomanic). There are different types of bipolar disorders such as Bipolar I which are manic episodes that last seven days or severe manic symptoms that need immediate care. Depression and manic symptoms can occur at the same time. Bipolar II is when you experience depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes. Cyclothymic Disorder is when you go through many moments of hypomanic symptoms as well as depressive symptoms that can last two years. You can undergo emotion, sleep, and activity level changes as well as unusual behaviors. There are differences between manic and depressive episodes. In manic episodes, you can experience feeling cheerful, having a lot of energy, feeling more active than usual, talking really fast, and doing a lot of things simultaneously. There are also moments where you could have trouble sleeping, become agitated, irritable, and touchy as well as engaging in risky activities that you would not normally do. Depressive episodes consist of a lot of negative symptoms such as feeling sad, empty and hopeless. Your energy levels are very low as well as your activity levels. You feel like you cannot enjoy anything, tend to forget things, and have trouble concentrating. People who are depressed can also experience thoughts of death or suicide. To avoid these life-impacting consequences that come with being bipolar, there are treatments to control your mood swings as well as psychotherapy. Medications to treat bipolar disorder can be antidepressants, atypical antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers. It is best to talk to a doctor or therapist about the pros and cons of each medication before taken. Psychotherapy is also known as talk therapy to help give support, education, and guidance. There is family-focused therapy, psychoeducation, and cognitive behavioral therapy. All of these helpful treatment options can help you live a typical life.

Discussions of anxiety and depression often go hand in hand. For example, symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder can include depression and anxiety. Bipolar disorder is characterized by alternating moods of depression, a bipolar-specific depression, and mania, which can include anxiety. Withdrawal from drugs and alcohol can include symptoms of both depression and anxiety. Signs and symptoms of any mental health disorder usually includes talks of either depression or anxiety, or both. Even more complicated is the fact that anxiety can be a symptom of depression and however closely related or closely discussed anxiety and depression might be, they are two completely different mental health disorders, symptomatic experiences, and diagnoses.

When it comes to stories about mental health and treatment, it is the tendency of the media to take a small part of the truth and stretch it as far as it can go. Yoga has been a popular topic in research, debate, and conversation for quite a few years. Within the last year, yoga has been in conversation with the topic of depression. Is yoga a cure for depression? Does yoga do anything for depression? Should we even be doing yoga at all? The benefits of yoga are undeniable because of the copious amount of research that has been done. Yoga is scientifically proven to reduce depression symptoms by reducing symptoms of ruminating thoughts, physical distress, internal inflammation, and more. A great stress reducer, yoga helps alleviate many of the triggers which causes the symptoms of stress to worsen. Many tests have been done to measure different components of the effect of yoga, some of which has included brain imaging studies. Most recently, studies on yoga and the effect it has on depression tested the actual scales of depression before and after many weeks of yoga. Hatha and Bikram yoga are the two main forms of yoga studied. Groups of participants in multiple studies did yoga classes for about eight weeks. Researchers evaluated the intensity of depression symptoms in participants before and after their approximately eight weeks of yoga. After yoga, the depression symptoms were reduced. Some studies which included mindfulness courses found that depression scales dropped so low that the depression was clinically in remission. These studies enforce the belief that yoga is helpful for treating depression. Yoga is not, however, a cure for depression. While there are many evidence based practices, like yoga, there is not a cure for depression. There are no cures for mental illnesses. Each person experiences their mental illness in a different way which means they experience their recovery in a different way. Each of the proven methods for treating depression that reduce the symptoms of depression either reduce it into remission or into a manageable state. Yoga helps make depression livable.

Scientific Reports recently reported on the effect that sugar has on depression. 8,000 adults were followed for two decades plus, 22 years total, following men specifically. Researchers found that high quantities of sugar in the diet, a whopping 67 grams of sugar a day, created a 23% higher likelihood for being depressed with clinical depression after the onset of the study. Participants would fill out a survey every few years about the state of their diets, dietary choices and their health. Additionally, the men in the study answered questions about their mental health, like the development of any depression or anxiety. Interestingly, despite the increase of mental health diagnoses, there were no clinical diagnoses pre existing at the time the study began. It took five years for researchers to see a change in trend. Men who ate the high quantities of sugar, like 67 grams of sugar per day, were more often diagnosed with mental health disorders. Interestingly, when there were dietary changes, there was still a high prevalence of mental health disorder. This study might have answered an old ‘chicken or the egg’ inquiry in regard to sugar and mental health. Depression or anxiety does not cause a greater likelihood to consume sugar, but a high sugar diet might be creating depression and anxiety, which is then unchanged. Sugar is a stimulant substance which spikes the brain’s production of dopamine, much like drugs and alcohol does. Hyper and euphoric, the experience of consuming high amounts of sugar is a pleasurable one, until the sugar wears off. Sugar does create a spike in the experience of pleasure, but it creates a crash which takes all of the pleasure away. After producing such a strong amount of dopamine, the brain starts craving sugar immediately, to recreate that highly stimulated and euphoric experience. Spike and crash cycles eventually exhaust the brain, making it difficult to produce dopamine without sugar. This is how the cycle of substance use disorders start as well. The brain becomes dependent on a substance and cannot tolerate the crashes. It is possible that the constant presence of sugar creates an imbalance in the brain which contributes to the development of depression.

The brain has things happen within it and the brain has things happen to it. Every second of every day the brain is working tirelessly to perform thousands of functions. Synapses are firing and refiring, behaviors are being ingrained into our system, thousands of stimuli are coming in and being processed- the brain is absolutely remarkable. However, the brain is also incredibly vulnerable. Vulnerable to both physical and emotional impact, the brain can be injured. When we experience trauma, abuse, or mental illness, it changes our brain. We have memories that cannot be erased, we learn lessons that could take years to unlearn and learn differently. New studies show that mental illnesses like depression structurally change the brain on the inside. Published in Scientific Reports, the study used a new form of imaging to map white matter in the brain. Talking about brain matter, we often talk about grey matter in the brain. For example, mindfulness and meditation are common practices proven to reduce the symptoms of depression and even help some people achieve remission from depression. Both mindfulness and meditation have been proven to increase grey matter in the brain, which is raw brain tissue upon which knowledge and information can be imprinted. White matter, on the other hand, is what connects one area of grey matter to the next area. Wiring together clusters of synapses and everything that lives in the grey matter of the brain, white matter is critical to brain function. Compromises in white matter can mean compromises in emotions, thinking, and other human functions. The study found that patients with depression had “alterations” in their white matter. Additionally, white matter in the brain of patients with depression did not have as high a quality compared to patients who did not have depression. Brain imaging studies are essential for gaining a deeper understanding of complicated mental illness like depression. Mental illnesses are not just feelings. They are complex systems of brain reactions which take on a physical form. Ongoing research enlightens the treatment process while also validating many of the treatments already in place.

According to the American Heart Association, one out of every five people who are hospitalized for either a heart attack or chest pain will develop depression. These patients don’t experience post-surgical depression or passing depression. Major depression is four times more common in those who have had a heart attack or been hospitalized for chest pain than the rest of the population. Additional statistics from the American Heart Association included one out of three survivors of a stroke developing depression and half of patients who have any kind of cardiac bypass surgery. Depression and the heart are closely related and can have a fatal relationship. Depression causes a high amount of stress. In people who experience their depression through lethargy and fatigue, there is typically a loss in diet, nutrition, and exercise. People who turn to drugs, alcohol, or food to cope with their depression also put a great amount of stress on the heart. CNN cites that patients with heart disease who are diagnosed with major depression are twice as likely to die within ten years as other patients. The lack of motivation, poor diet and exercise, and extreme emotional stress is heavy on the heart- metaphorically and physically. Coupled with substance abuse, the heart is strained to keep up with the weight of depression. Treatment for heart disease and heart attack should include a mental health screening and required short term work with a counselor or a therapist. Depression is considered relapsing and remitting. Proven practices like therapy, meditation, yoga, exercise, and treatment have reduced people’s depression scores considerably until they are in clinical remission. All of the practices proven to benefit people with depression are also healthy for the heart. Any kind of therapeutic technique which reduces stress reduces inflammation. Ultimately, heart problems are caused by chronic inflammation, which can be caused by chronic stress. Mental illnesses like depression are forms of mental stress and some have been linked to causing inflammation in the body. Yoga and meditation have been scientifically proven to reduce stress, reduce inflammation, and help encourage heart health.