What Is Depression?
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. It may include feelings of sadness, anxiety, emptiness, hopelessness, worthlessness, guilt, irritability, or restlessness. Depressed people may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable, experience difficulty concentrating, remembering details, or making decisions, and may contemplate or attempt suicide. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, fatigue, loss of energy, or aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present.
A number of psychiatric syndromes feature depressed mood as a main symptom. Mood disorders are a group of disorders considered to be primary disturbances of mood. Within them, major depressive disorder (MDD), commonly called major depression, or clinical depression, is a condition where a person has at least two weeks of depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all daily activities. People suffering bipolar disorder may also experience major depressive episodes. Dysthymia is a state of chronic depressed mood, the symptoms of which do not meet the severity of a major depressive episode. Outside the mood disorders, dysthymia is also commonly a feature of borderline personality disorder. Adjustment disorder with depressed mood is a mood disturbance appearing as a psychological response to an identifiable event or stressor, in which the resulting emotional or behavioral symptoms are significant but do not meet the criteria for a major depressive episode.
What causes Depression?
Depression is associated with changes in substances in the brain (neurotransmitters) that help nerve cells communicate, such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.
The levels of these neurotransmitters can be influenced by, among other
things, physical illnesses, genetics, hormonal changes, medications,
aging, brain injuries, seasonal/light cycle changes, and social
circumstances.
A 2010 review suggests that the genes which control the body clock may contribute to depression.
The biopsychosocial model proposes that biological, psychological, and social factors all play a role in causing depression. The diathesis–stress model specifies that depression results when a preexisting vulnerability, or diathesis, is activated by stressful life events. The preexisting vulnerability can be either genetic, implying an interaction between nature and nurture, or schematic, resulting from views of the world learned in childhood.
These interactive models have gained empirical support. For example, researchers in New Zealand took a prospective approach to studying depression, by documenting over time how depression emerged among an initially normal cohort of people. The researchers concluded that variation among the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene affects the chances that people who have dealt with very stressful life events will go on to experience depression. Specifically, depression may follow such events, but seems more likely to appear in people with one or two short alleles of the 5-HTT gene. Additionally, a Swedish study estimated the heritability of depression—the degree to which individual differences in occurrence are associated with genetic differences—to be around 40% for women and 30% for men, and evolutionary psychologists have proposed that the genetic basis for depression lies deep in the history of naturally selected adaptations. A substance-induced mood disorder resembling major depression has been causally linked to long-term drug use or drug abuse, or to withdrawal from certain sedative and hypnotic drugs.
Basically you have to low or to high of certain chemicals In the brain, experience daily stress and lack of sleep.
A 2010 review suggests that the genes which control the body clock may contribute to depression.
The biopsychosocial model proposes that biological, psychological, and social factors all play a role in causing depression. The diathesis–stress model specifies that depression results when a preexisting vulnerability, or diathesis, is activated by stressful life events. The preexisting vulnerability can be either genetic, implying an interaction between nature and nurture, or schematic, resulting from views of the world learned in childhood.
These interactive models have gained empirical support. For example, researchers in New Zealand took a prospective approach to studying depression, by documenting over time how depression emerged among an initially normal cohort of people. The researchers concluded that variation among the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene affects the chances that people who have dealt with very stressful life events will go on to experience depression. Specifically, depression may follow such events, but seems more likely to appear in people with one or two short alleles of the 5-HTT gene. Additionally, a Swedish study estimated the heritability of depression—the degree to which individual differences in occurrence are associated with genetic differences—to be around 40% for women and 30% for men, and evolutionary psychologists have proposed that the genetic basis for depression lies deep in the history of naturally selected adaptations. A substance-induced mood disorder resembling major depression has been causally linked to long-term drug use or drug abuse, or to withdrawal from certain sedative and hypnotic drugs.
Basically you have to low or to high of certain chemicals In the brain, experience daily stress and lack of sleep.