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Depression & Mental Health FAQs
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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Lithium Builds Gray Matter in Bipolar Brains
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LOS ANGELES, CA -- April 11, 2007 -- Neuroscientists at UCLA have shown that lithium, long the standard treatment for bipolar disorder, increases the amount of gray matter in the brains of patients with the illness.
The research is featured in the July issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry and is currently available online.
Carrie Bearden, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and Paul Thompson, PhD, associate professor of neurology at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, used a novel method of three-dimensional MRI to map the entire surface of the brain in people diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
When the researchers compared the brains of bipolar patients on lithium with those of people without the disorder and those of bipolar patients not on lithium, they found that the volume of gray matter in the brains of those on lithium was as much as 15% higher in areas that are critical for attention and controlling emotions.
The neurobiological underpinnings of bipolar disorder are not well understood. Nor is it understood how lithium works in controlling these severe mood swings, even though it has been the standard treatment for some 50 years. These new findings suggest that lithium may work by increasing the amount of gray matter in particular brain areas, which in turn suggests that existing gray matter in these regions of bipolar brains may be underused or dysfunctional.
This is the first time researchers were able to look at specific regions of the brain that may be affected by lithium treatment in living human subjects, said Bearden. "We used a novel method for brain imaging analysis that is exquisitely sensitive to subtle differences in brain structure," she said. "This type of imaging has not been used before to study bipolar patients. We also revealed how commonly used medications affect the bipolar brain."
Although other studies have measured increases in the overall volume of the brain, Bearden said, this imaging method allowed the researchers to see exactly which brain regions were affected by lithium. "Bipolar patients who were taking lithium had a striking increase in gray matter in the cingulate and paralimbic regions of the brain," she said. "These regions regulate attention, motivation and emotion, which are profoundly affected in bipolar illness."
While conventional MRI studies have measured brain volume in total, this new image analysis allows researchers to examine differences in cortical anatomy at a much greater spatial resolution.
In this study, Bearden and colleagues at UCLA used computer analysis to analyze brain scans collected by collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh in order to determine whether bipolar patients showed changes in brain tissue and, if so, whether those changes were influenced by lithium treatment. Specifically, they employed high-resolution MRI and cortical pattern-matching methods to map gray matter differences in 28 adults with bipolar disorder — 70% of whom were lithium-treated — and 28 healthy control subjects. Detailed spatial analyses of gray matter distribution were conducted by measuring local volumes of gray matter at thousands of locations in the brain.
While the brains of lithium-treated bipolar patients did not differ from those of the control subjects in total white-matter volume, their overall gray-matter volume was significantly higher, sometimes by as much as 15%.
Unfortunately, said Bearden, there is no evidence that the increase in gray matter persists if lithium treatment is discontinued. "But it does suggest that lithium can have dramatic effects on gray matter in the brain," she said. "This may be an important clue as to how and why it works."
SOURCE: University of California, Los Angeles, Health Sciences
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Depression & Mental Health FAQs 2
What is Clinical Depression? Clinical
depression can affect your body, mood, thoughts, and behavior. It can
change your eating habits, how you feel and think about things, your
ability to work and study, and how you interact with people. Clinical
depression is not a passing mood, a sign of personal weakness or a
condition that can be willed away. Clinically depressed people cannot
"pull themselves together" and get better. Depression can be
successfully treated by a mental health professional or certain health
care providers. With the right treatment, 80 percent of those who seek
help get better. And many people begin to feel better in just a few
weeks.
Depression a Big Factor in Poor Health World Health Organization Finds Depression Often Goes Untreated By Salynn Boyles WebMD Medical News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD Sept.
6, 2007 -- Depression has a greater impact on overall health than
arthritis, diabetes, angina, and asthma, but it all too often goes
unrecognized and untreated, a report from the World Health Organization
(WHO) suggests. more... Depression a Big Factor in Poor Health
For Additional Information About Depression Write To: The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)6001 Executive Boulevard, Room 8184, MSC 9663 Bethesda, MD 20892-9663
For free brochures on depression and its treatment call: 1-800-421-4211. or visit: http://www.nimh.nih.gov
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