The depressed mood, sadness, guilt, the feeling that you are not capable of anything … With depression, life is perceived only in gloomy colors, and it seems that there is no way out of this state. However, depression can be dealt with, psychiatrists and psychotherapists say.
It is worth someone to complain to a depressive state, many begin to look at him with an involuntary reproach. “Get together, pull yourself together,” is often pronounced in response. Many are sure that a person just does not know how or does not want to control his mood and makes an elephant from a fly.
“This is because we often confuse depression with sadness, sadness, spleen,” explains the psychiatrist Elena Vrono. – She seems to us a temporary condition like a cold or bruise from a bruise – what goes by itself. However, depression is a real disease “.
Studies of neurophysiologists show that its influence on human health can be extremely dangerous. But depression
is treated. Antidepressants and psychotherapy come to the rescue. What are the causes of this disease? How it manifests itself? And what to do if we ourselves or a loved one fell ill?
How to determine whether this is depression
Not every negative experience speaks of a state of depression. Sorrow, sadness, longing are separate emotions, and depression involves a complex combination of feelings, ideas, memories and thoughts.
“So, throughout life, we repeatedly experience sadness, which becomes an adequate reaction to separation, disappointment, failure or loss,” says American psychologist Carroll Isard in the book “Psychology of Emotions” (Peter, 2008). “Under depression, sadness is supplemented by other emotions – most often ashamed, loss of self -esteem and aggression that a person experiences in relation to himself”.
If your loved ones or you yourself began to look at life too gloomy, it is important to understand what you are dealing with-with a strong emotional experience of some events in life or with a mental disorder.
The tendency to take on your account everything said, especially unpleasant, also a sign of depressive states
“Dressed mood, loss of interest in life, loss of strength, apathy, when nothing brings pleasure. Tangible decrease in appetite and weight. Insomnia or drowsiness. Anxiety or lethargy. Decrease in performance, worsening memory and concentration of attention. Loss of the meaning of life. If most of these signs appear constantly and at least two weeks, most likely this is depression, ”says Elena Vrono.
It is also known that the tendency to accept everything said to your account, especially unpleasant (“this is my fault”, “forever unlucky for me”), also a sign of depressive states. “It is important to know,” Elena Vrono continues, “that the symptoms of depression can manifest itself both in a fairly soft form and to be pronounced painful.”.
Two reasons: heredity and stress
Different specialists study depression: neurophysiologists, biochemists, genetics, endocrinologists, psychologists. And all of them agree that this disease is determined by two main factors: a hereditary predisposition and the environment in which a person grows and lives.
A group of scientists under the leadership of the professors of Jorge Balesturos and forms Martinez from the University of Granada (Spain) conducted a study. They proved the connection between the emergence of depression and the special structure of one of the genes associated with the mechanism of the transfer of serotonin – neurotransmitter, which is responsible for our mood.
It turned out that the carriers of such a genotype with the trigger mechanism of depression may become the most insignificant stress. Those who have a different structure of this gene are not subject to depression at all.
Meanwhile, there is another view of the occurrence of this disease. “It is obvious that depression is of family origin,” writes the American psychoanalyst Nancy Mquilims in the book “Psychoanalytic Diagnostics” (Class, 2015), “but so far we cannot evaluate the extent to which this disease is transmitted genetically, and to what depressive behavior of parents becomesThe reason for the similar behavior of their children “.
“The postpartum depression of the mother, which is accompanied by depression, detachment, anxiety, inability to feel the needs of the baby, greatly affects it and contributes to the occurrence of a predisposition to this disease,” agrees the psychoanalyst Vitaly Zimin. – The fact is that the boundaries of the “I” in infancy are very blurry, the child does not yet share himself and others and experiences maternal depression as his own ”.
In other words, the presence of a “unfavorable” genotype cannot be called a prerequisite for the formation of depressive disorders. Moreover, warm, trusting relationships in the family reduce the risk of the disease, even if there is a genetic predisposition to them.
Treatment of depression helps to cope with chronic diseases
Depression is able to disable much more people than angina pectoris, arthritis, asthma and diabetes – such a conclusion was made by a group of experts of the World Health Organization (WHO) led by Dr. Somnat Chatterji. They conducted a survey among 245,000 people from 60 WHO participating countries.
The participants answered the questions: how they sleep, whether their pains bother, whether they are intense, whether they have problems with memory and concentration of attention, how they cope with everyday tasks. The results of the survey showed that the most destructive for health is depression. If a person suffers from depression against the background of a chronic disease, this aggravates the course of the disease.
3.2% of respondents experienced a state of depression at least once in the last year. Among those suffering from angina pectoris were 4.5%, among patients with arthritis – 4.1%, among asthmatics – 3.3%, among diabetics – 2%. Moreover, up to 23% of people suffer from depression against the background of one or more of these diseases, which is much higher than the likelihood of developing depression in a person who has no chronic disease.
“Depression in combination with a chronic ailment acts destructively on the body, since the patient’s condition worsens, despite the treatment of the underlying disease,” says Dr. Chatterji. – Such results indicate the need to treat depression priority “.
In a closed circle
Most of the study of depression is based on the measurement of neural brain activity. What happens in it when we read, think, feel any emotions? Identification of the features of the functioning of the brain of those who suffer from depression, in comparison with healthy people, allows you to better understand which treatment will be effective.
Psychologists and psychiatrists of the University of Wisconsin (USA) for the first time used the electromagnetic resonance method to see the connection between brain activity and the ability to control emotions.
The participants in the experiment considered images causing strong negative experiences (traffic accidents, grinning embittered animals), and mentally tried to reduce their emotional reaction. To do this, they imagined a positive outcome of the situation or represented it only by a frame from a film that has nothing to do with real life.
It turned out that all healthy people are able to consciously manage emotions, but in those suffering from depression, mental efforts do not affect their intensity. In addition, the more they make efforts in order to realize and control emotions, the more they are kindled, falling into a vicious circle of gloomy thoughts.
Dr. Johnstone, one of the authors of the study, believes that during depression, the systems of nervous ties between different centers of the brain are violated: the control center is not able to send a “soothing” signal to the center of emotions.
Another study – French neurophysiologists – confirmed the existence of a zone in the brain, which is responsible for the tendency to “personalize”, to attribute information to himself personally. It turned out that in healthy people this zone is active only when they think about themselves. In depression suffering from depression, this zone is activated in response to any questions, especially with negative subtext.
When a person in depression is asked: “What do you think of stinginess, greed. ” – he perceives the question as if he is asked:“ And you have a similar drawback?”And leaning to answer positively. So, when the depressioners say that “this is stronger than them” and they cannot react differently, they can be believed: the perception of the world does not depend on their desire. But this can be adjusted.
There is an exit
So, everyone who is experiencing depression perceives life in black, evaluates what is happening from a negative point of view, because this is how the disorder of the functioning of their brain is manifested. “However, fortunately, these processes are reversible,” says Elena Vrono. – A steady trend to notice and scroll in the head negative information can be eliminated “.
It is interesting to compare how two main directions act in the treatment of depression – treatment using special medicines, antidepressants, and cognitive psychotherapy. It turns out that both are changing the biology of the brain. Moreover, psychotherapy, forcing patients to work on the connection of “negative thoughts – negative emotions”, has a direct effect on those zones of the brain that are responsible for the personalized perception of negative information.