How Screen Time Affects Depression Risk (M)
The study’s results show that screen time has a complex relationship with mental health.
Category: Depression
The Type Of Breathing That Fights Depression And Anxiety
Changing patterns of breathing improves mental health, concentration and memory.
Changing patterns of breathing improves mental health, concentration and memory.
Deep breathing can help reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety, studies show.
It also has the power to increase concentration and memory.
Controlled yogic breathing has even been shown to help with severe depression.
But, it has to be done right.
Diaphragmatic breathing — colloquially known as deep breathing — involves contracting the muscles underneath the lungs.
Sometimes it is called ‘belly breathing’ because it feels like breathing from the belly.
In contrast, ‘chest breathing’ — using the muscles around the upper body — is less efficient.
Dr Melanis Rivera, a clinical psychologist who works at a student counselling centre, said:
“When you breathe with your upper chest, upper lungs, upper body, what happens is you are taking in less oxygen which is vital to your body and organs.”
This sort of shallow breathing is linked to anxiety, fatigue and muscle tension.
It can also lead to headaches and panic attacks.
Belly breathing is best done by breathing in steadily for four seconds from the diaphragm, then exhaling for six seconds.
Dr Nathaly Shoua-Desmarais, a clinical psychologist and biofeedback specialist, said:
“The misconception is the longer you suck in air the better, but it’s the longer exhalation that provides the most benefit.”
While it might seem odd that we need to train ourselves to breathe properly, Dr Shoua-Desmarais said:
“Babies use diaphragmatic breathing.
Somewhere along the way we develop bad habits that develop into thoracic breathing.”
Retraining ourselves to do something so natural, though, can prove difficult.
It is best to start with a 5-minute routine at first, said Dr Rivera:
“If you’ve been chest breathing for a good portion of your life and you suddenly tell your body, hey, let’s stretch out these lungs, you could feel dizzy or get a headache, even hyperventilate.”
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The Everyday Plant That Reduces Depression Risk (M)
Nature needs to be brought as close to people’s daily lives as possible, even in the city.
8 Everyday Tools For Fighting Depression
Eight exercise for developing serenity and calm.
Eight exercise for developing serenity and calm.
Teaching people to focus on positive emotions helps them deal with stress, new research finds.
People were taught classic positive psychology exercises such as keeping a gratitude journal, recognising positive events each day and doing small acts of kindness.
Together, the training helped reduce people’s anxiety and depression over the six weeks of the study.
The researchers focused on 170 caregivers for people with dementia.
Half were put in a control group, while the rest were encouraged to focus on their positive emotions.
People were taught eight skills:
- Practice a small act of kindness each day and recognise the power it has to increase positive emotions.
- Set a simple and attainable goal for each day and note down progress.
- Savour a positive event through journalling or discussing it with someone.
- Spot at least one positive event each day.
- List a personal strength and how you have used it recently.
- Use mindfulness to pay attention to daily experiences.
- Identify a daily stressor and reframe it as a positive event.
- Keep a gratitude journal.
Professor Judith Moskowitz, the study’s first author, said:
“The caregivers who learned the skills had less depression, better self-reported physical health, more feelings of happiness and other positive emotions than the control group.”
The results showed that those who learned the positive psychology exercises experienced a 7 percent drop in depression scores and 9 percent drop in anxiety.
This was enough to move people from being moderately depressed to being within the ‘normal’ range.
Professor Moskowitz chose dementia caregivers as the disease is on the rise:
“Nationally we are having a huge increase in informal caregivers.
People are living longer with dementias like Alzheimer’s disease, and their long-term care is falling to family members and friends.
This intervention is one way we can help reduce the stress and burden and enable them to provide better care.”
One participant in the study commented:
“Doing this study helped me look at my life, not as a big neon sign that says, ‘DEMENTIA’ in front of me, but little bitty things like, ‘We’re having a meal with L’s sister, and we’ll have a great visit.’
I’m seeing the trees are green, the wind is blowing.
Yeah, dementia is out there, but I’ve kind of unplugged the neon sign and scaled down the size of the letters.”
The study was published in the journal Health Psychology (Moskowitz et al., 2019).
A Major Depression Symptom Many Don’t Know (M)
The symptom affects the ‘second brain’.
4 Lifestyle Factors Are Key To Avoiding Depression (M)
Simple lifestyle changes can significantly reduce depression risk.
This Emotion Can Double Depression Risk (M)
A leading cause of depression in the over-50s.
A Common Physical Sign Of Depression
The symptom occurs in 50 percent of people with depression.
The symptom occurs in 50 percent of people with depression.
Physical pain is a surprisingly common sign of depression, research reveals.
Symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, dizziness, muscle and leg pain are present in over half of people with depression.
Indeed, the physical symptoms of depression are nearly as common as the emotional ones, such as moodiness, lack of motivation and tiredness.
Even after successful treatment with antidepressants, the physical symptoms can linger after the emotional ones have improved.
Professor Kurt Kroenke, who led the study, said:
“Depression is a risk factor for symptoms of pain.
The most reports of pain – such as muscle pain, headaches, leg pain – are two or three times more common in people with depression.”
The conclusions come from a study of 573 depressed people visiting 37 different clinics in the US.
The results revealed that common antidepressants were less effective when the physical symptoms were more severe.
In one-third of patients, the physical symptoms lasted longer than the emotional ones.
Professor Kroenke said:
“Physical symptoms may not respond to common antidepressant treatment as much as the emotional symptoms.
Even though the physical symptoms may be related to or aggravated by the depression, they can linger longer than the emotional symptoms.”
Professor Kroenke continued:
“While physical symptoms showed, on average, some improvement with antidepressant treatment, the improvement was typically less than was reported for emotional symptoms.
Most of the improvement for the physical symptoms occurred within the first month of treatment, while the emotional symptoms continued to improve over a nine-month period.”
The study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (Greco et al., 2004).
The Activity That Halves Depression Risk (M)
The study tracked people over seven years.
Severe Depression Relieved By Two Doses Of Psychedelic (M)
Most depression treatments take weeks or months to start working.
