The Trail of Evidence From Treatment To Causes of Depression Essay

The Trail of Evidence From Treatment To Causes of Depression When a person is depressed, the primary characteristic is a subjective awareness of mood change: the person has an ongoing feeling of sadness or emptiness. This feeling is often accompanied by eating disturbances, feelings of hopelessness, inability to concentrate, indecisiveness, sleep disturbances, lost interest in enjoyable activities, psychomotor retardation, fatigue, sluggishness or lethargy, and is often co-morbid with other disorders, especially anxiety. This constellation of feelings and observable behaviors give rise the term depression. In cases where the depression is not severe or recurrent, psychotherapy alone may be sufficient. However, in many cases, antidepressants in conjunction with psychotherapy are indicated. And in some proportion of cases, where the depression is especially severe, persistent, debilitating and resistant to antidepressants, therapies involving electrical stimulation to the brain are sometimes used. In psychology, theories surrounding the etiology of depression vary widely, from neurobiological to cognitive to behavioral, socioenvironmental and psychodyanmic. Biosocial models acknowledge that both biological predisposition and environmental factors play an interactive role in the creation and maintenance of depression. The nervous system is always changing. It changes as a result of its own activity, which itself is a reflection of responses to a variety of sources: external input, the system's own cyclical fluctuations, and its modification due to past experiences. Moreover, the nervous system's changes occur in varying degrees, from extremely temporary (action potentials transiently change the nervous system) to la... ...ations with Neil's Brain , by William Calvin and George Ojemann http://www.williamcalvin.com/bk7/bk7.htm 7)NAME OF YOUR THIRD WEB REFERENCE SITE, COMMENTS ABOUT IT http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web3/URL%20OF%20YOUR%20THIRD%20WEB%20REFERENCE 8) New technique looks promising for treatment resistant depression http://www.psych.org/pnews/00-01-21/technique.html 9) Vagus nerve stimulation for treatment-resistant depressions: a multi-center study. led by John Rush http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/bps/abstracts/994888abs.htm 10) VNS: high tech hope for those with major depression , by Sandra Gordon http://aolsvc.health.cbshealthwatch.aol.com/ 11) A noradrenergic and serotonergic hypothesis of the linkage between epilepsy and affective disorders by P C Jobe et al http://depression.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm