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US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated 40 million
Americans living today will suffer from major depressive illness during their lives.

Seasonal affective disorder is major depression that appears in the fall or winter and goes away in spring, thought to be caused by lack of sunlight.

Postpartum depression occurs within four weeks of a women giving childbirth. Most new mothers suffer from some form of the �baby blues.� Postpartum depression, by contrast, is major depression, thought to be triggered by changes in hormonal flows associated with childbirth.

Catatonic depression is a rare form of major depression characterized by (at least two): Stupor, excessive motor activity, extreme negativism, peculiarities in voluntary movement, and repetition of other people's words or actions. - mcmanweb.com

Psychotic depression is a rare form of depression characterized by delusions or hallucinations, such as believing you are someone you are not and hearing voices.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 18.8 million American adults, or about 9.5 percent of the US population age 18 and older in a given year, have a depressive disorder.
Depression is a chronic illness that exacts a significant toll on America's health and productivity. It affects more than 21 million American children and adults annually and is the leading cause of disability in the United States for individuals ages 15 to 44.

Lost productive time among U.S. workers due to depression is estimated to be in excess of $31 billion per year. Depression frequently co-occurs with a variety of medical illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, and chronic pain and is associated with poorer health status and prognosis. It is also the principal cause of the 30,000 suicides in the U.S. each year. In 2004, suicide was the 11^th leading cause of death in the United States, third among individuals 15-24.

According to the World Health Organization, depression is presently on track to becoming the world's second-most disabling disease (after heart disease) by the year 2020.

Depression is responsible for some $87 billion a year in lost productivity in the US (a conservative estimate), and according to Bank One, is responsible for most lost work days in its employees after pregnancy and childbirth.

Additionally, one million people worldwide die by their own hand, most as a result of a mood disorder. Finally, the linkage between depression and a host of physical illnesses makes it arguably the world's greatest killer.

Research presented at the 56th Annual Conference of the Canadian Psychiatric Association shows a marked link between bipolar disorder and migraines.

The odds of migraine in persons with bipolar disorder were 40% higher than the general population.

Data obtained from 36,984 people aged 15 and over, who screened positive for manic or depressive episodes with migraine, were compared against those who screened positive for mania but who didn�t suffer from migraines.

Amongst males, 14.9% of those with manic episodes were also diagnosed with migraines compared with 5.8% of the general population. Amongst females, 34.7% had both migraines and bipolar disorder compared with 14.7% who only had migraines.unquote.gif

While the research was skewed towards persons who were already diagnosed with bipolar disorders, what does it mean for people who suffer from migraines but who may have an undiagnosed bipolar disorder?

Migraines and headaches aren�t fully understood but the manifestations are very real and debilitating for their sufferers:

Throbbing pain
Nausea
Heightened sensitivity to light or sound
Seeing dots, wavy lines, flashing lights, or blind spots
Difficulty with speech, sensation, or movement

An estimated 2.1 million American adolescents have experienced major depression within the last year, according to a new comprehensive government study. Researchers surveyed more than 67,000 young people ages 12 to 17 and found that one in 12 had suffered from serious depression in the previous year.Nearly 13 percent of girls had struggled with depression, compared to less than 5 percent of boys. Odds of depression increased with age -- just 4 percent of 12-year-olds experienced depression but that climbed to 11 percent for older teens.

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New Breakthrough Could Be Why Some Antidepressants Do Not Work for You

By Forum Admin

	New Breakthrough Could Be Why Some Antidepressants don't work for You by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore (Picture Credit:Lazlo Woodbine/Flickr) What causes depression has been oversimplified, resulting in drugs that treat stress but not necessarily depression, according to new research. October 27, 2009 2:58 PM PDT -- Depression researcher Eva Redei presented research at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week that calls into question two tenets of depression science: that stressful life events are a major cause of depression, and that an imbalance in neurotransmitters triggers depressive symptoms. For decades, drugs have been developed around these beliefs, leading to antidepressant medications that are actually designed to relieve stress. But stress-related genes have almost no overlap with depression-related genes, reports Redei, the David Lawrence Stein professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. (Full disclosure: Northwestern is my alma mater.) That means those antidepressants work if you're stressed, but not necessarily if you're depressed. "This is a huge study and statistically powerful," Redei says. "This research opens up new routes to develop new antidepressants that may be more effective. There hasn't been an antidepressant based on a novel concept in 20 years." Redei's conclusion is based on studies of rats with behavioral and physiological abnormalities that are found in humans with major depression. Using microarray technology, Redei was able to isolate and identify the specific genes related to depression in the hippocampus and amygdala--regions of the brain associated with depression. Redei then exposed four different strains of rats to chronic stress for two weeks, and identified which genes increased or decreased in response to this stress in all four strains. She now had one set of depression-related genes and one of stress-related genes. To test the long-held belief that stress is a major cause of depression, Redei looked for similarities between these two sets of genes. Out of more than 30,000 genes on the microarray, 254 were related to stress and 1,275 to depression. Only 5 were found in both samples. "This finding is clear evidence that at least in an animal model, chronic stress does not cause the same molecular changes that depression does," Redei says. She is now looking at the genes that differ in the depressed rats so that she can narrow down targets for drug development. Antidepressants are also often ineffective, Redei says, because they aim to boost the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, whose reduced levels have been associated with depression. But this strategy is now also being called into question. In the second part of the study, Redei found that the biochemical events that result in depression were starting all the way back in the development of neurons, not in neurotransmitters. She says her animal model of depression did not show significant differences in the levels of genes controlling neurotransmitters' functions. In other words, medications are working as Band-Aids on the effect, as opposed to treatments of the cause. "If depression was related to neurotransmitter activity, we would have seen that," she says. Of course, her research depends on whether depression in human brains behaves similarly to depression in rats. "The similarities between these regions of the human and rodent brain are remarkable," she says. "The hippocampus and amygdala are part of the so-called ancient lizard brain that controls survival and are the same in even primitive organisms." ----------------------------------------------- Elizabeth Armstrong Moore is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. She has contributed to Wired magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and public radio. Her semi-obscure hobbies include unicycling, slacklining, hula-hooping, scuba diving, billiards, Sudoku, Magic the Gathering, and classical piano. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

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2 Responses to "New Breakthrough Could Be Why Some Antidepressants Do Not Work for You"

Dodgeyaussie

said this on 20 Nov 2009 10:24:36 PM CST

Oh great.

(Reply to this comment)

Terranaught

said this on 21 Nov 2009 1:08:14 PM CST

Firstly, there's no litmus test to define exactly what your neurotransmitter system is either lacking or what it's so -called imbalance is so treating "depression" directly with medication is a process of trial of usually several meds. That'ss one way of explaining why some anti-depressants don't work for you. But the very idea of branding the condition as "depression" may some day been viewed as primitive. It is a predjudicial word which may have nothing to do with the actual biology--a good start would be to retire the phrase "mental illness" and replace it with"mental wellness". So-called depression being a state of mental "unwellness" tends to infer that it is a condition that is a condition that may be brouhgt on by a number of dietary, sleep-related and in general epi-gentic causes rather than a single "disease" which one is whitewashed with. IMO there should be no such question as "are you depressed?" The question should start with "do you like yourself and how you're coping?" followed by what's different about your lifestyle factors or events that may have changed since you were untroubled by negative self absorption. The patient must be led to believe that he or she is in charge of the process--not the psychiatrist or psychotherapist has as they have no ability or magical authority to make the person happy with themselves or confident that they can lannd on their feet no matter what happens. One of the implications is that a person should swiftly be able to say that any medication is a "controlling" presence as the right medications fo0r a chemical imbalance should not have a noticeable presence in the person's feelings. They should be transparent and the process should be one where time and transparecy of the medication should add up to a generral improvement in confidence or connection with life rather than misery. Conventionalizing something into a disease dubbed with a baggage title like "depression" is simply a bad science mistake--a new primitive take on something that is not that simple. Anyone can fall into pre-occupation with negativity if they withdraw from opportunity and live a life of saying no instead of yeah, you bet your butt I'll be there. I',m 54 and been through it and know it from the inside out. I take my meds and I can get angry and sad but hope is always something that returns. Do you like yourself? Making decisions to get out of traps and trying the whole gammut of SSRI's until you feel like you're the superstar in your own movie is the prescription--not aquieessing to a lot of people's tendency to want to co-miserate and call it depression.

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New Breakthrough Could Be Why Some Antidepressants Do Not Work for You

New Breakthrough Could Be Why Some Antidepressants don't work for You

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2 Responses to "New Breakthrough Could Be Why Some Antidepressants Do Not Work for You"