Depression is a complex psychological state. It doesn't matter how old you are, what your gender is, or what your race or social class is. Depression can often cause a person to feel downhearted, helpless, and hopeless, and irritable. It is common for people to have these feelings sometimes, but some people can’t get out of it, and this is the case for the difference between normal and major depression. Depression includes the symptoms of loss of appetite, insomnia or hypersomnia, weight gain or weight loss, psychomotor agitation, loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness, decreased ability to concentrate, and recurrent thoughts of death. Low mood and loss of interest are the most prominent symptoms of depression. The common property of these symptoms is a decreased activity level in parts of the brain.
Risk factors of depression:
Several factors can contribute to depression; one of the causes could be a deficiency of certain neurotransmitters in the brain that signal moves from one nerve cell to another. The immune system of a depressed patient is usually shallow.
Environmental factors: Negative affect is a well-established risk factor for the onset of major depressive disorders. High levels seem to give people the opportunity to develop stressful episodes in response to stressful life events.
Adverse experiences in childhood, especially when there are so many experiences of diverse kinds, form a set of potential risk factors for major depression. Stressful life events are a well-known cause of major depressive episodes. Still, the presence or absence of negative life events near the beginning of the episodes does not necessarily provide a useful guide for predicting disease or choosing treatment.
Genetic and physiological factors: the risk of developing major depressive disorder is two or four times higher in first-degree relatives than in the general population.
Treatment
Anti-depressant medications are used to treat serious or prolonged depression. These medications generally increase the level of neurotransmitters like serotonin in the central nervous system, or they mimic the neurotransmitters. The medications mostly used nowadays increase the serotonin level by decreasing the removal of serotonin from the space around nerve cells. The medications which are often used are Fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine (Luvox), paroxetine (Paxil), escitalopram (Lexapro, Celexa), sertraline (Zoloft). By bipolar disorder in the manic face, heavy tranquilizers are used to stop the manic symptoms. By bipolar disorder, lithium salts are sometimes used to stabilize the condition and prevent new outbreaks of depressive or manic faces.
One of the best ways for treating depression is psychotherapy, usually in combination with medication. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most effective therapy while treating depression, where the goal is to identify negative thoughts, emotions, and memories and modify them with rational thought patterns.
Sometimes serious depression is treated by applying electric shock through the head, electroconvulsive therapy. The shock induces epileptic eruption of nerve signals through the brain, giving cramps throughout the body. The cramps are alleviated or stopped by applying anesthesia before the electroshock. This form of treatment is controversial since it can cause memory loss and is suspected of causing brain damage. The possibility of brain damage is, however, denied by most psychiatrists.
You must be logged in to post a comment.