As a sufferer from it,is there a chemical cause for depression?
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There is a chemical cause for depression, but it depends upon circumstantial depression (someone you love died, you lost your job, etc.), which you will grow out of, and clinical depression, which should be treated. Talk to your doctor.
Yep...serotonin is only one...dopamine is another...GABA is another, epinepherine and nor-epinepherine are others...and an imbalance of any of these could lead to varying levels of depression symptoms.
Some people take Saint Johns Drops when the depression is mild, but I'm guessing it would be better to consult it with a specialist. Good lick.
Every feeling is caused by chemicals.
ya.. real depression is caused by a chemical in balance i guess is wat u call it wen one of the chemicals in ur brain isnt working right
I don't think so. My own experience with profesional psychologists has led me to believe that depression's cause is more environmental rather than anything biological.
Beliefs, assumptions, and positions form the basis for depression, which in many cases is a protective mechanism designed to keep us from having to feel fear, hurt, and other feelings rooted in childhood. For a lot of us, it's easier to feel depressed than those other things. It becomes familiar and therefore comforting. I'm not speaking theoretically here; I've been there myself.
Because many people never take the steps to change these beliefs (and thus alleviate the depression) they inflict the same symptoms upon their offspring, thus creating the appearance of a genetically inherited condition.
Depression can be situational, or thyroid related: there would be a test, but there isn't, so I'd say: "not as such".
Serotonin is actually a neurotransmitter (one of 5 that circulate in the brain) not an endorphin. But yes, to answer your question, another neurotransmitter Norephinephrine has also been linked to depression, as has Dopamine (a 3rd neurotransmitter).
A neurotransmitter, simply put, is a chemical messenger that tells the neurons in your brain when and how to fire (that is, react) and how strongly to react, therefore impacting how your brain communicates within itself and having secondary impacts on your mood.
Antidepressant medications such as Effexor and Cymbalta belong to a class of medications called SNRIs (serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) that work by increasing the amount of these 2 neurotransmitters in the brain (by prohibiting them from being reabsorbed from neuronal synapses too quickly).
Other, older antidepressants are SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) that do the same thing, only affecting serotonin though. Most well-known antidepressants belong in this class... Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, etc.
Wellbutrin is in a class of its own. It is an NDRI (norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor) that impacts reuptake of those 2 neurotransmitters.
Additionally, pharma companies have SNDRIs in the works (none currently on the market) that reduce reuptake of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine all at once. They will probably be the most effective antidepressant pills to date.
Hi There!
I too have suffered with Depression (from childhood)
It took me a long time to understand it, where it comes from, why it starts, what exactley is it??
Well.Its to do with the Serotonin Levels in your Brain.Lower levels of Serotonin cause you to feel low, depressed, helpless etc!
The way my Dr explained it is that, some people are just born with more Serotonin than others & that it only takes something traumatic to trigger off the depression...For me it was when my Dad died when I was just a kid.
Thats why some people are ECSTATIC and others arn't...
I believe that Positive Thinking has a lot to do with how we cope with Depression, Im looking into Kabbalah at the Moment.
How you cope with it is up to you? Do you want to cope with it Naturally (self help books, motivational tapes, Healthy eating & excersise) Or prescription Medication (which I have found very helpful)
As for any other chemicals that contribute to depression I don't know of any others? As far as I knoe Serotonin is the main factor.
Good Luck & Take Care
Yes there are three differant chemicals in the brain that a lack of would cause depression, Serotonin, Dopomine, and ...I forget the last one. The trick is finding the right pill that acts on the right receptors.
I remember when I first started nursing and depression was genetic and a hand down or there was something wrong with the brain. Thirteen years later it has become a chemical imbalance. This is a load of rubbish. We are all born with they same Brain, period and that is life.
Cutting all this crap talking therapies are having big success since people are fighting the big drug companies. The brain is still in a raw state of understanding and it will be centuries before people understand it. Hippocrates talked of things in the Greek times and still have not been found in the 21 st century.
Depression is a slowly learnt behaviour which certain people indulge in and by the time they realise they have it the brain and mind has changed. The mind can be changed as new transmitters can always be built again to repair pathways across the synapse. People really do enjoy depression and have become so used to it is like a friend. The hardest thing is breaking the learnt behaviour over many years and challenging the thoughts we have and love to collect as we Can not let go of them. The recent count is 60,000,000 in Europa now suffer from it and as the population increases and our society so does depression.
This article contains further information on depression:
http://www.magnetic-diet.com/depression/...
The biological basis of our emotions is nowhere nearly as simple as people pretend it to be. Here is a realistic, but readable report from last year of how researchers look at this:
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/inde...
People have been hoping for a simple cause for depression for over fifty years. This was triggered by the discovery of how much more specific tricyclic antidepressants were in helping depression than previous medications that were just stimulants and sedatives. The original hypothesis of a chemical imbalance was based on the autonomic nervous system where there is indeed a balance between sympathetic neruons that use norepinephrine to speed the heart and do many other things vs. parasympathetic neurons that use acetylcholine to slow the heart and do many other opposite things. Some hoped that the brain was similarly balanced and that balance became imbalanced with depression. It's not that simple, not with serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine put together.
All of the antidepressants that work on those three chemicals have effects on those chemicals quickly and affect those chemicals in everyone who takes them. Yet the antidepressant effect of these drugs takes weeks and is present in far less than 100% of people who take them. The biological basis of depression is not to be found simply in one chemical or even three, but rather in the sorts of things the above article discusses. And even then there is a place for understanding the psychology of depression as well as its biology. People also oversimplify the psychology of depression into just being the result of negative thoughts or something similar. Neither psychology nor biology is simple.
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