Tag: depression

Hitting the right nerve: the electronic neck implant to treat depression | Life and style | The Guardian

Steve Collins is a 45-year-old unemployed architect who has been living with severe depression for 15 years. “I’m like a hermit crab hiding under rocks, crouching in dark spaces and only venturing out occasionally; there’s no light, no hope, no way in or out. I’ve been in therapy for years and must have taken at least six different antidepressant drugs. I had ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) and that literally shocked me out of it for a bit, but the depression came back – and the idea of ECT was so shocking for my family. People say: ‘Well, at least you haven’t got cancer.’ But, honestly, I’d rather have almost anything than live like this.”

A new type of treatment, vagal nerve stimulation (VNS), may offer hope for people like Collins who don’t improve with conventional depression treatment. A small battery-powered device like a pacemaker is inserted under the skin in the neck, from where it emits pulses of weak electical current to stimulate part of the vagus nerve. The vagus normally monitors our vital functions; it collects information about our breathing, heart rate and joint position, and sends signals back to the brain that tell it to respond if there are fluctuations.

No one fully understands how VNS works in severe depression that has been unresponsive to other treatments, admits psychiatrist Prof Hamish McAllister-Williams, of Newcastle University. “We don’t know exactly how lots of treatments work in psychiatry, including antidepressant drugs. I’m more interested in whether something works and, in the case of VNS, I’m persuaded that it does.” He cites two recent studies supporting the role of VNS, in addition to the usual treatment options of drugs, talking therapies and ECT. He says it’s likely to be a true effect, not just a placebo, because a placebo tends to kick in quickly – and wear off quickly – whereas VNS takes six months to work, but at least half of those who respond, remain well. It may be particularly effective with people like Collins, who have improved after ECT, but whose depression keeps on returning.

Hitting the right nerve: the electronic neck implant to treat depression | Life and style | The Guardian

11 Shocking Things That Happen To Your Brain When You Suffer From Even Mild Anxiety

If you have an anxiety disorder, then you already know how it can impact your brain, cause you to worry, and totally mess with your day. But did you know even mild cases of anxiety can affect you, in much the same way? Chemically speaking, any type of anxiety can alter your brain, in some pretty surprising ways. But it can also affect you psychologically — perhaps more than you’d think.

But it’s important to note how mild anxiety is different from regular nerves. “Anxiety is a natural human response that serves a purpose: to keep us safe. However, sometimes your brain is more sensitive and perceives danger when it does not exist,” licensed psychologist Crystal I. Lee, PsyD tells Bustle. “Your brain mistakenly floods itself with norepinephrine and cortisol, which triggers anxious thoughts and feelings when they’re not useful.”

That’s why you might be sitting at work, and suddenly boom — you’re filled with worry. And thanks to stress chemicals, like cortisol, going haywire in your brain, you might even struggle to think clearly, or make decisions. It can be intense for some people, which is why therapy is always a good idea, as well as taking care of great yourself — by exercising, eating well, and sleeping at least eight hours — so your symptoms can be less intrusive.

Here are a few shocking ways anxiety can affect you, according to experts.

11 Shocking Things That Happen To Your Brain When You Suffer From Even Mild Anxiety

Is everything you think you know about depression wrong? | Society | The Guardian

n the 1970s, a truth was accidentally discovered about depression – one that was quickly swept aside, because its implications were too inconvenient, and too explosive. American psychiatrists had produced a book that would lay out, in detail, all the symptoms of different mental illnesses, so they could be identified and treated in the same way across the United States. It was called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. In the latest edition, they laid out nine symptoms that a patient has to show to be diagnosed with depression – like, for example, decreased interest in pleasure or persistent low mood. For a doctor to conclude you were depressed, you had to show five of these symptoms over several weeks.

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The manual was sent out to doctors across the US and they began to use it to diagnose people. However, after a while they came back to the authors and pointed out something that was bothering them. If they followed this guide, they had to diagnose every grieving person who came to them as depressed and start giving them medical treatment. If you lose someone, it turns out that these symptoms will come to you automatically. So, the doctors wanted to know, are we supposed to start drugging all the bereaved people in America?

The authors conferred, and they decided that there would be a special clause added to the list of symptoms of depression. None of this applies, they said, if you have lost somebody you love in the past year. In that situation, all these symptoms are natural, and not a disorder. It was called “the grief exception”, and it seemed to resolve the problem.

Is everything you think you know about depression wrong? | Society | The Guardian

Some Parentified Kids Grow Up to Be Compulsive Caretakers – The Atlantic

While there is a large body of literature that focuses on the neglect children experience from their parents, there’s less examination of how this neglect puts kids in roles of parenting each other. And there is virtually no empirical research on how this affects relationship dynamics later in life—both with siblings and others. Scholars agree that there are gaps in sibling research—primarily an incomplete understanding of how these relationships and roles are affected by abusive family environments. Hooper noted that “the literature is very scarce in this area.”

Some Parentified Kids Grow Up to Be Compulsive Caretakers – The Atlantic

How climate change will threaten mental health – CNN.com

“One of the major health effects of flooding seems to be the mental health aspects,” said James Rubin, a psychologist at Kings College London whose recent research looked into the psychological impact of people both directly and indirectly effected by floods. “There are a whole host of stressors around it,” he said.
These types of natural disasters are expected to rise in frequency due to climate change, and Rubin feels that the mental health aspect deserves more attention.
“Preventing (climate change) from happening, from worsening and intervening is really important,” he said.
Climate change is predicted to bring more than just floods: There could be heat waves, sea level rises causing loss of land, and forced migration and droughts affecting agriculture and the farmers producing it. And with these concerns comes a plethora of issues plaguing the human mind, such as depression, worry, anxiety, substance abuse, aggression and even suicide among those who cannot cope.
“If you don’t resolve them, these conditions don’t necessarily go away,” Rubin said.
To find out the extent of this psychological burden, he focused in on flooding and sent surveys to more than 8,000 people living in areas affected by floods in 2013-14, looking for signs of conditions such as depression and anxiety.
How climate change will threaten mental health – CNN.com

The sad clown: The deep emotions behind stand-up comedy – CNN.com

Comedians used to tell a joke that goes like this: 

“A comedian walks into a psychologist’s office. The psychologist says, ‘lie down and tell me everything you know.’ “
The punch line: “I haven’t been able to get an appointment since. He’s been doing my act in Philadelphia.”
The material that comes from a counselor’s couch often makes great fodder for a comic’s act. It’s the sad clown paradox: The men and women who make people laugh for a living often struggle with mental health challenges offstage that are hardly a laughing matter. 
It’s unclear how many comedians struggle with mental challenges such as depression, but many of the most familiar names have talked and joked about the issue: Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman, Stephen Fry, Spike Jones, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Ellen DeGeneres. It’s no accident that the Laugh Factory in Hollywood has an in-house psychologist. 
In “Spark of Madness,” one hour of the eight-part CNN documentary series “The History of Comedy,” comics talk openly about their mental struggle and how it fuels their work.

The sad clown: The deep emotions behind stand-up comedy – CNN.com: “”

(Via.)

One of Japan’s most popular mascots is an egg with crippling depression

Corporations are forever perfecting the art of prodding primal emotions — greed, lust, hunger — to make us buy stuff.

But is it possible to market malaise? In Japan at least, the answer is yes.

Meet Gudetama, the anthropomorphic embodiment of severe depression.

Gudetama is a cartoon egg yolk that feels existence is almost unbearable. It shivers with sadness. It clings to a strip of bacon as a security blanket. Rather than engage in society, it jams its face into an eggshell and mutters the words, “Cold world. What can we do about it?

PRI.ORG

The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic

Walter Pitts was used to being bullied. He’d been born into a tough family in Prohibition-era Detroit, where his father, a boiler-maker, had no trouble raising his fists to get his way. The neighborhood boys weren’t much better. One afternoon in 1935, they chased him through the streets until he ducked into the local library to hide. The library was familiar ground, where he had taught himself Greek, Latin, logic, and mathematics—better than home, where his father insisted he drop out of school and go to work. Outside, the world was messy. Inside, it all made sense.

Nautil.us

Is Facebook Luring You Into Being Depressed?

In his free time, Sven Laumer serves as a referee for Bavaria’s highest amateur football league. A few years ago, he noticed several footballers had quit Facebook, making it hard to organize events on the platform. He was annoyed, but as a professor who studies information systems, he was also intrigued. Why would the young men want to give up Facebook? Social scientists had been saying the social network was a good thing.

Nautil.us

The cloth cap that could help treat depression

At first glance, the cloth cap produced by Barcelona-based Neuroelectrics looks less like a medical device than a hybrid of the headgear for a Soviet-era cosmonaut and a swimmer in the 1930s. With a network of protruding wires and an electronics pack on the back, the futuristic soft helmet is in fact a tool for electrically stimulating the brain to identify and treat depression and strokes. Soon, the technology could be used by patients at home while doctors monitor them remotely.

Dubbed a “Fitbit for the brain”, in a nod to the fitness monitoring device, the cap can diagnose medical conditions by examining brainwaves – small electronic pulses fired between the human brain’s nerve cells. It then treats the conditions by stimulating the brain with a low electrical current conveyed via a series of electrodes placed around the cap.

The Guardian