Category: Depression

Some depressed patients even experienced dramatic improvements in just a couple of weeks.

Electrical brain stimulation produced a marked improvement in depression symptoms in 70 percent of people who took part in a recent study.

Some depressed patients even experienced dramatic improvements in just a couple of weeks.

The painless, non-invasive treatment targets a natural pattern of electrical activity in a specific part of the brain.

Most people in the study reported that their depression symptoms were reduced by at least half after two weeks.

The newer type of brain stimulation used in the study is called ‘transcranial alternating current stimulation’ (tACS).

Dr Flavio Frohlich, study co-author, explained:

“We conducted a small study of 32 people because this sort of approach had never been done before.

Now that we’ve documented how this kind of tACS can reduce depression symptoms, we can fine tune our approach to help many people in a relatively inexpensive, noninvasive way.”

All the people in the study had been diagnosed with major depression.

They were randomly divided into three groups with two of them getting a sham version of the treatment to provide controls.

The electrical brain stimulation lasted 40 minutes and was done on five consecutive days.

It targeted natural electrical oscillations in the brain called ‘alpha waves’.

Alpha waves are more predominant when people close their eyes and dream, or meditate.

Studies have suggested that depression is linked to an imbalance of alpha waves in the right frontal cortex.

Stabilising these waves, the scientists found, caused many people’s depression to lift after two weeks.

However, after four weeks, the effect of the brain stimulation appeared to have worn off.

Dr Frohlich said:

“It’s important to note that this is a first-of-its kind study.

It was unclear what would happen if we treated people several days in a row or what effect we might see weeks later.

So, the fact that we’ve seen such positive results from this study gives me confidence our approach could help many people with depression.”

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Alexander et al., 2019).

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:

1. Practice a small act of kindness each day and recognise the power it has to increase positive emotions.
2. Set a simple and attainable goal for each day and note down progress.
3. Savour a positive event through journalling or discussing it with someone.
4. Spot at least one positive event each day.
5. List a personal strength and how you have used it recently.
6. Use mindfulness to pay attention to daily experiences.
7. Identify a daily stressor and reframe it as a positive event.
8. 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).

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).