Causes of Depression

Depression is a state of feeling despondent and perennially anxious. Many people attempt to uncover the causes for depression in the hopes of finding a suitable cure, and the answers range from medical conditions to emotional issues. Interestingly, the condition continues to occur despite all our best efforts. The hard thing about it is that it is not always easy to tell which person it will attack next. Even someone who seems somewhat happy one minute can actually succumb to it without his friends or family understanding why. It is really a difficult scenario, both for the person suffering from it as well as those in his inner circle of friends and family.

What truly causes someone to be depressed? Are there common factors that are found among people of all cultures? Is it really so simple or is it much more complex than what doctors usually point out? It is important to find the most common causes because even if you deal with everything else and the root is still around, chances are, even medications will not work effectively. Following is a list of the most foundational causes why someone would start feeling depressed, and each point ends with a suggested solution:

1. Constant fear will likely result in depression in the long run. What kind of fear? This is not talking about usual fears like fear of the dark or fear of dogs, but more often than not, a fear of the future or of the unknown. This often comes about when a person feels like he is an orphan. He may not be one physically, but feeling that there is nobody looking after your future, your provision, or your protection, can cause you to feel constantly afraid. As such, it is important for a person to realize that there is somebody who loves him, who is for him and not against him, and who will give everything up for him. Ancient writings say that perfect love can cast out fear, because when someone knows that he is loved perfectly, he will have no need to fear the future or fear not having enough for the present.

2. Getting burned out from something can also trigger depressed emotions. Burnout does not happen only from physical tiredness, although it contributes to it. Burnout can come about from extreme emotional pressure, such as when something or someone demands too much from you, whether real or perceived. A person needs to know that someone wants to give to him and not just to expect something grand from him all the time, especially if it is something that he cannot give. When he understands that there is someone who would be willing to give him everything with no strings attached, the possibility of burnout is lessened.

3. The most important factor that leads to depression is guilt and condemnation. The two come together, as when one feels guilt about something, he tends to condemn himself. This is a very tricky subject, because every one of us can feel guilty in a variety of ways. For one person, it may take a serious fault like betrayal or stealing, while for another, a simple white lie can make him feel guilty for days. The interesting thing is that this is an emotion that everyone feels. The only difference is that some people have gotten into peace with themselves, and sometimes with the Supreme Being. It is easy when you only feel guilty towards a person because you can avoid that person, but when you feel condemned by the Divine, there is no way out of it. The good news is that many people have found a way to be reconciled to the Divine. Many cultures depend on many human efforts to reach God, which sometimes fails. Christians across the world say the atonement came when God’s Son gave His life for ours. This is perhaps why Christians can enjoy a life free of guilt and shame that everyone else seems to crave.

These causes of depression are common among all peoples, and thankfully they are not a lost cause. When you find yourself struggling with any of these three areas, you can find solutions to them and see yourself being set free from the grips of depression.

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Depression and Media

Many psychologists are keen on pointing out the harmful effects of the media on children, such as cartoons with violence and other mindset-affecting shows. But do you know that what you see on the media daily may actually cause depression? Although it may sound a little extreme, constant bombardment of bad news is actually a surefire way of getting yourself scared, anxious, and worried, and you cannot seem to reason away those feelings!

Some of the ways that media can be harmful in the long run are as follows:

1. The news that we generally see on TV or read on the newspaper can be estimated at over 90% bad news. Think about it. Did you ever sit at the breakfast table in the morning to check for good news? Perhaps you were hoping, but generally, the headlines all blare at you about who was killed where, who was raped by whom, and which neighborhood was struck by earthquakes or fires. Sure, you may think that you want to be updated by what’s going on around the world, but it actually makes you conscious of all the tragedy, to the point that it can stir up constant fear.

2. Movies that we enjoy watching may be entertaining, but when they emphasize negative things like sicknesses, deaths, anything that may make you shed emotional tears out of getting so involved with the story, it has a repercussion on your heart as well. Even if you are not conscious about it, you might wind up internalizing the possibility of illness, and by the time you feel any symptom that seems to resemble those you saw in the movie, you tend to jump to conclusions! This is not beneficial especially in the long run, as it makes you anxious and worried irrationally.

3. Even documentaries can have a similar effect. For example, if you watch a documentary about how burglars usually enter homes, you tend to become conscious about how your home might be broken into! Although it helps in allowing you to make sure your home is burglar-proof, the added worry will only result in more stress that can also translate into anxiety. Discovery stories about certain pathogens or disorders in children can also make you worried!

4. Advertising that interrupts TV movies as well as out-of-home ones not only lure you to want certain items, but it can also affect your self-esteem. Even if you had never had problems with your figure, if you are constantly bombarded with images of sexy, toothpick-thin models, it can have an impact on your general perception of yourself. As such it can lead you to wish you were thinner, or that you had better hair, or better skin tone or teeth. In the end, it can be unhealthy as you wind up feeling dissatisfied with your body or yourself in general. Also, when you can’t get what you want, it can also translate into a lot of unnecessary stress—after all, if you were never conscious of those products in the first place, you would never have desired them!

5. Some genres of music also extol negative emotions, and even contain lyrics about suicidal thoughts. If you constantly listen to these kinds of music, you subject yourself to the temptation of having the same mindset as the writer.

Of course, it is practically impossible to get rid of all our exposure to media. In that case, the best way to deal with them is to feed your mind on good things to counteract the effect of media. You will wind up warding off depression before it takes root. Many people, such as Christians, put high emphasis on renewing their minds with the truth of the Bible in order to silence the clamor of the cluttered media we come in contact to daily. Many can attest to the benefit that comes from this practice, as they seem to be less anxious, less worried, and less fearful than the average person, although their exposure to the same media may be pretty much similar. In the end, what is important is you know how to deal with what assaults your senses, in order to make sure you don’t fall prey to depression without your knowledge!

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Fight Depression and Win

Depression is more than just feeling down and blue, and it’s not something that you can psyche out even though its considered a mental disorder by most experts. Today, more than 20 million people in the United States alone suffer from this condition, and while it affects ones quality of life, it can nevertheless be overcome.
If you are suffering from depression, some of the few symptoms that you will experience would include feelings of sadness and indifference, loss of appetite, difficulty of sleeping, unusual fatigue, muscle weakness, and worse, thoughts of suicide. The last symptom in the list should give you an idea that depression is not something that you should take for granted. Whether you or a loved one is suffering with it, you should act at once and deal with the problem immediately.

There are several reasons why a person gets depressed. In order to solve the problem, you have to get to the root of it and determine what may be causing you to feel depressed. This is the first step in curing depression, because if you keep on denying the fact that you are indeed suffering from such condition, it will only make matters worse. Determine the things that you think might have caused you to feel the way you are feeling and deal with it. By all means, let people whom you love know if you are depressed so. Just as the old proverb goes, “No man is an island.” Letting your feelings out would be a helpful idea than to keep your problems to yourself.

One of the things that most depressed people do is lock themselves in their rooms and try to isolate themselves from the outside world for days or weeks. Instead of doing this when you’re feeling depressed, go outside and find something to do that will help shift your focus from your problem to other things. Sometimes, it only takes a few fun activities to get rid of the negative emotions that are trying to pull you down. Or, why not try to go the gym and have a good workout? According to studies, exercising is one the best ways to boost the mood. The credit is given to endorphins, chemicals produced in the body during exercise that makes you feel good. In fact, these chemicals are often referred to as “feel good” chemicals because of their ability to improve the mood for long periods of time.

Sometimes, inadequate sleep can also result to depression and even bipolar disorder according to medical studies. There have been proofs that depressive illnesses or mood disorders are caused by poor sleeping habits. This is the reason why people who get only 4 hours of sleep end up grumpy aand irritated throughout the day. Therefore, try to get as much sleep as you can at night so that you’ll wake up feeling much better the following day. In the afternoon, try to get a 20-minute power nap as well. One of the things that sleep does to our body is to boost the healing process of damaged cells and tissues. You can’t also deny the fact that sleep is one way to forget the things that are worrying you or causing your anxiety.

Your diet also plays a very important role in fighting depression. As much as possible, stay away from sugar-rich foods as sugar has the ability to cause hormonal fluctuation and give you mood swings. Instead, go for foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. These kinds of foods are considered anti-depressant. They also offer good nutrition for the brain. Sources of omega-3 include fish oil, cauliflower, broccoli, tuna, salmon, sardines, and mackerel. Not only do these foods help cure depression, they also help strengthen your cardiovascular system by lowering your blood cholesterol.

Finally, fight depression by shifting your focus to the positive things in life instead of the negative. People who are depressed have a tendency to fix their eyes on the things that can destroy rather than build them such as their problems with money, family, and health. On the other hand, seeing things in a positive way is a huge step out of depression so start focusing on your blessings rather than your failures. Do this especially during the times when you feel not like doing it and you will be amazed how it will shift your mood in an instant.

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How Condemnation Causes Depression

Psychologists and psychiatrists are experts in diagnosing depression, based on the symptoms. Typically, a depressed person is melancholy, either loses his appetite or overeats, and in some cases, he will not feel like spending time with people. This hermit-type symptom of depression is usually attributed simply to the person being in the blues so much that he just is not in the condition to socialize, which is actually understandable.

But do you know there is an underlying cause why depressed people prefer to hide away from people? If you have ever felt that way, you might recall some of the thoughts that crossed your mind that led you to want to stay away from people. Possible causes would be that you kept getting hurt and frustrated by other people, or that you yourself, during your whole depressed phase, only kept lashing out at other people anyway that you decided staying away would keep you from continuing to hurt the ones you love.

In this case, there is actually a deeper root behind your depression. Could it be that behind your strong façade, you are struggling with condemnation?

The difficult thing about condemnation is that it can come at us from all directions. This means that it can come when other people condemn us for something we did, but it can also come from within us: that is, self-condemnation. It is a natural tendency for people to be conscious of the good and bad things we do; any child who has grown enough to have a conscience undergoes this thought process. Am I doing the right thing? Am in hurting anyone? And no matter how “hard” we build ourselves up to look in front of other people, deep inside, we are bothered by the wrong things we do.

This is why many depressed people go as far as to slash their wrists or do other things to hurt themselves: unconsciously, they think that they’ve done so many wrong things that they deserve the pain, they deserve the punishment. In a similar vein, depressed people who shy away from other people believe that they are better off all by themselves, as they would only wind up hurting everyone else anyway.

But hiding away is never the complete answer. You can stay away from people all you want, but if you still wallow in your depression and condemnation, it will be like a big, dark cell. This is partly the reason why many depressed people find freedom in believing in a God who forgives, and who actually took the punishment upon Himself so that people do not have to be trapped in condemnation.

Although this is a difficult truth to believe, Christians who have gone through depression attest to the faster way they have recovered from depression once they understood that they were forgiven completely. Some who have even developed mental breakdowns have testified to becoming well when they developed this way of thinking. This inherent need for forgiveness among human beings is not something that can be reasoned away, after all. Of course, sceptics would wonder about the reality of this release from condemnation that Christians claim, as to them, it does not seem possible that there could be a God so loving who would come down and take the punishment for people instead of punishing them for their own mistakes and failures.

Whatever you choose to believe, understand that dealing with depression is not limited only to medication or physical aspects of your life. What you think about yourself, about what you deserve, and about the way you treat other people, ultimately affects how you feel on the overall. And whether you like it or not, this will undoubtedly contribute to your chances of getting over your depression, as well as how fast that journey will be. Perhaps believing in a Divine Being who made a way for you to be free might work for you, so it might be worth a shot. After all, you have one life to live, and you can live it to the max!

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Antidepressant, talk therapy fail to beat placebo

New York: Neither antidepressants nor "talk therapy" were able to outperform inactive placebo pills in a new clinical trial on depression treatment -- though there were hints that the effects varied based on people`s sex and race, researchers report.

The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, add to evidence that people receiving "real" depression treatment in studies -- from antidepressants to St. John`s wort -- often do no better than people given a placebo.

A recent review found that a minority of antidepressant users even fared worse than placebo users.

In this latest study, researchers randomly assigned 156 depression patients to either take the antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft and other brands) daily for 16 weeks; undergo a form of psychotherapy called supportive-expressive therapy (twice a week for four weeks, then weekly for 12 weeks); or be in a placebo group given inactive pills.

After 16 weeks, there were no overall differences in how the three groups fared.

Of antidepressant patients, 31 percent were treatment "responders" (meaning they`d fallen below a certain score on a standard measure of depression symptoms, or had seen their score drop at least 50 percent.)
The same was true of about 28 percent of patients in the talk-therapy group, and 24 percent in the placebo group. The differences among the three groups were so small as to be likely due to chance.

"I was surprised by the results. They weren`t what I`d expected," said lead researcher Jacques P. Barber, dean of the Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York.

Still, he stressed in an interview, the lack of benefit over placebo does not mean that depression therapies are pointless.

For one, Barber said, receiving a placebo in a clinical trial "is not the same as getting no treatment."

Study participants in placebo groups have contact with health professionals who are asking about their symptoms and well-being, Barber pointed out. And for some people, that attention can make a difference -- and may help explain the placebo response seen in studies.

In addition, at least some people in placebo groups believe they are getting the real treatment. And some studies have suggested that people`s beliefs about their therapy play a key role in whether they get better.

But apart from that, different people may respond differently to a given type of depression therapy. Barber`s team found some evidence of that.

The study, which focused on urban, low-income adults with major depression, had an unusually large minority population for a clinical trial on depression: Of the 156 patients, 45 percent were African American.

And Barber`s team found that African-American men tended to improve more quickly with talk therapy than with medication or placebo.

In contrast, white men fared best on placebo, while black women showed no differences in their responses to the three treatments.

Only white women, Barber said, showed the expected pattern: a quicker response to both medication and talk therapy than to the placebo.

But all of that is based on fairly small numbers of people, and more research is needed to see if the gender and racial differences are real, according to Barber.

A psychiatrist not involved in the study agreed. "Those findings are interesting, but need to be interpreted with a grain of salt," said Dr. David Mischoulon, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

EVERYTHING WORKS TO SOME DEGREE?

As for the overall lack of benefit from the real treatments over placebo -- in this and other studies -- Mischoulon cautioned against reading that as "nothing works for depression."

"I think it`s the opposite," he told Reuters Health, "It`s more that, everything seems to work to some degree."

Like Barber, Mischoulon said that the placebo condition in clinical trials is not really "no treatment."

His advice for people suffering from depression symptoms is to talk with your doctor about the pros and cons of all the treatment options, including different forms of talk therapy and medication.

"I try to offer as broad a menu of options as possible, because all may potentially help," said Mischoulon, who has also studied alternative depression remedies, like fish oil and acupuncture.

Another caveat from the current study, he noted, is that it looked only at two types of medication. (Some patients were switched to another drug, venlafaxine (Effexor), if they did not respond to sertraline after eight weeks). And it tested just one type of talk therapy.

Supportive-expressive therapy is a short-term form of psychoanalysis that aims to help people understand how their personal relationships are related to their symptoms.

It`s different from cognitive behavioral therapy, the best-studied form of talk therapy for depression. Both Barber and Mischoulon said it`s not clear if the current findings would extend to psychotherapies other than supportive-expressive therapy.

"This is one type of psychotherapy, and it`s two antidepressants," Mischoulon said. "It would be wrong to conclude that psychotherapy doesn`t work, and antidepressants don`t work."

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