Talk Depression

Everyone knows that if you don’t get much sleep for a few days, you usually get a bit slow and perhaps even cranky, the world becoming a much harsher place because your mind is literally exhausted. But now researchers at the University of Gronigen in the Netherlands are conducting tests to understand how sleep deprivation creates symptoms that mimic or even cause depression. Because rats have basically the same brain structure as humans, the rodents were used in an experiment to see what effects the lack of sleep has on the brain. They were only allowed to sleep four hours a day, rather than their normal sleep cycle for the test. After a week, their brains seem to exhibit the same types of issues that were found in the brain of a depressed human. For instance, the mood centers, responsible for handling emotion, mood and stress, had a reduced sensitivity to stimulus. After a month, even memory and cognitive issues started to fail. Scientists even injected the rats with...

I kind of wish this was an April Fool’s thing, but it’s not. A new study says that those comfort foods that people often chow down on such as baked goods and fast food from places like McDonalds and the like can increase the risk of depression in people. When I was a kid and I was feeling particularly down, my mother would always bake up some fresh cupcakes, and that would pretty much cheer me up for the moment, but as we all know, depression is more of a long term thing. And since I’ve had my battle with the disease and probably more than I should have of Big Macs, it’s hard to not see the reality in the findings presented. According to the research, done at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and University of Grenada, those that partook in the two were 42% more likely to become depressed, and the more that one consumes, the higher that risk becomes. They learned this from studying over 12000 people, of which 657 became depressed during the study’s six month...

Recently we lost one of our members to suicide and it made us reflect on the process that one goes through before reaching that point. It’s a horrific thing to be in so much pain that you would rather end your life, unknowing of what is in the afterlife (religious or not), in order to make that pain go away. It seems that they reached out and did not find satisfaction in the online world, and that’s unfortunate. But it is understandable to an extent. People, whether in cyberspace or in the real world, don’t really comprehend how much torture depression leading up to such an act can be. They think it’s just a phase or someone is being melodramatic. And perhaps in some cases it is. I’ve know from my own experience that when I’ve mentioned how I am feeling like it, I get something like “Stop it. You don’t want to do that.” The problem is that they don’t actually have a solution to the underlying problem, nor do they even want to know what is bothering me, just that I shouldn’t...

There are several medical researches carried out to determine the cause of depression but none has suggested an exact mechanism that triggers such illness. Unlike the old studies that suggested that a person will suffer from depression as a result of troubled thoughts or emotions, new discovery suggests the causes can be multi-factorial. Biological/ Genetic Biological causes are caused by changes in the chemistry of the brain such as fluctuations in the level of hormones. Genetical reasons for depressions can run in families for generations. In the case of if one identical twin suffering from depression, the chances the other twin suffering from the same illnes is 70 percent. As for adoptive family members, depressive illnesses has little effect on the child. Neurotransmitter Imbalance Depression can be caused by neurotransmitter imbalances that are involved in mood regulation and help different areas of the brain to communicate with each other. If one is lacking of...