Science of Depression
This article discusses a redefinition of depression not as a chemical imbalance but as an illness in which something (stress, environmental causes like radiation) causes brain cells to atrophy:
""The best way to think about depression is as a mild neurodegenerative disorder," says Ronald Duman, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale. "Your brain cells atrophy, just like in other diseases [such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's]. The only difference with depression is that it's reversible. The brain can recover."
Drugs like Prozac then, work not by restoring a balance in serotonin levels, but rather serotonin helps repair brain cells.
Interesting link...
Staying away from a "depression" label with children
This is a very well-thought out argument against a recent suggestion in the journal "General Psychiatry" to begin labelling preschoolers as depressed.
The author, Claudia Meininger-Gold, states that once this label is applied "our thinking will stop. Under the pressure of the powerful pharmaceutical industry, a direct line from diagnosis to drug will be the path of least resistance."
Dr. Gold goes on to suggest other ways of thinking about and treating children that especially take into account the plasticity of their brains:
"I do have ideas about how to help these families in the present, ideas that are informed by contemporary research at the interface of developmental psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral genetics. This research shows that a child’s mind grows and develops when the people who are most important to the child are able to think about the child’s experience without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. A parent’s capacity to “hold a child in mind’’ can help that child learn to manage difficult emotions and may actually change the way his brain handles stress."
(Kind of reminding me of the "Are We a Victim of Our Biology" Thread)
Pleasure, Hunger, Depression
This article was primarily about the science of hunger, but had an interesting finding regarding depression. The overall finding was that some people are more sensitive to pleasurable sensation and that these people will need less of whatever provides that sensation. Those with less sensitivity are indulging more--in the case of this study, eating more. The tangential study regarding depression is that when the stomach is empty, there is a hormone called ghrelin released which seems to counteract depression and anxiety. I would think this could create a vicious cycle in which those with low pleasure receptors would eat more in order to feel good, but by eating more would actually increase feelings of depression/anxiety.
Pleasure, Hunger, Depression
Interesting... I actually just stumbled across this 2006 research just today in Science Daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061206093648.htm
Dr Lucy Donaldson, senior author on the paper, said: "When we increased serotonin levels we found that people could recognise sweet and bitter taste at much lower concentrations than when their serotonin levels were normal. With increased noradrenaline levels the same people could recognise bitter and sour tastes at lower concentrations. Salt taste doesn't seem to be affected at all by altering either of these neurotransmitters."
She added: "Because we have found that different tastes change in response to changes in the two different neurotransmitters, we hope that using a taste test in depressed people will tell us which neurotransmitter is affected in their illness."
Dr Jan Melichar, the lead psychiatrist on the paper, added: "This is very exciting. Until now we have had no easy way of deciding which is the best medication for depression. As a result, we get it right about 60-80% of the time.
Found an article related to depression and health
>> Medscape >> Scientific Studies >>
Stress, Depression Can Cause Skin Disease. -
A large Australian study has confirmed that stress and depression can be
etiologic factors in skin disease. "The consensus...has long been that skin
diseases are strongly associated with psychological difficulties and
illness," Dr. Parker Magin and colleagues at the University of Newcastle in
New South Wales write in the August issue of the Archives of Dermatology.