Depression - Page 36 of 43

Depression Linked To Pea-Sized Brain Structure That Backfires

An area of the brain that tracks negative events newly linked to depression.

An area of the brain that tracks negative events newly linked to depression.

A brain structure that tracks negative events backfires in depression, a new study finds.

The habenula — a structure the size of a pea — reacts strangely to negative events, researchers have found.

It could help explain a common symptom of depression: dwelling on negative memories.

Professor Jonathan Roiser, one of the study’s authors, said:

“A prominent theory has suggested that a hyperactive habenula drives symptoms in people with depression: we set out to test that hypothesis.
Surprisingly, we saw the exact opposite of what we predicted.
In people with depression, habenula activity actually decreased when they thought they would get a shock.
This shows that in depressed people the habenula reacts in a fundamentally different way.
Although we still don’t know how or why this happens, it’s clear that the theory needs a rethink.”

The results come from comparing brain scans (fMRI) of 25 people with depression with those of 25 people who never experienced depression.

Dr. Rebecca Lawson, the study’s first author, said:

“The habenula’s role in depression is clearly much more complex than previously thought.
From this experimental fMRI study we can draw conclusions about the effects of anticipated shocks on habenula activation in depressed individuals compared with healthy volunteers.
We can only speculate as to how this deactivation is linked to symptoms, but it could be that this ancient part of the brain actually plays a protective role against depression.
Animal experiments have shown that stimulating the habenula leads to avoidance, and it is possible that this occurs for mental as well as physical negative events.
So one possible explanation is that the habenula may help us to avoid dwelling on unpleasant thoughts or memories, and when this is disrupted you get the excessive negative focus that is common in depression.”

The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry (Lawson et al., 2016).

Brain image from Shutterstock

Psilocybin From ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Could Help Treat Very Severe Depression

Psilocybin, a hallucinogen in magic mushrooms, was found to be well-tolerated and safe to use.

Psilocybin, a hallucinogen in magic mushrooms, was found to be well-tolerated and safe to use.

Psilocybin — a hallucinogen from ‘magic’ mushrooms — can help reduce the symptoms of severe depression, a new study finds.

Psilocybin is also currently being tested for alcoholism, smoking cessation, and in people with advanced cancer.

The small study gave psilocybin to 12 people with treatment-resistant depression.

The hallucinogen was found to be well-tolerated and safe to use.

Along with supportive therapy, the psilocybin helped half the participants to feel better up to three months later.

Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, the study’s first author, said:

“This is the first time that psilocybin has been investigated as a potential treatment for major depression.
Treatment-resistant depression is common, disabling and extremely difficult to treat.
New treatments are urgently needed, and our study shows that psilocybin is a promising area of future research.
The results are encouraging and we now need larger trials to understand whether the effects we saw in this study translate into long-term benefits, and to study how psilocybin compares to other current treatments.”

Participants in the study had been ill with depression for an average of 17 years.

All had tried antidepressants twice and most had already had psychotherapy.

They were given a therapeutic dose of 25mg while being monitored by two psychiatrists.

Professor David Nutt, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“Previous animal and human brain imaging studies have suggested that psilocybin may have effects similar to other antidepressant treatments.
Psilocybin targets the serotonin receptors in the brain, just as most antidepressants do, but it has a very different chemical structure to currently available antidepressants and acts faster than traditional antidepressants.”

Professor Philip Cowen, writing in a linked commentary, said:

“The key observation that might eventually justify the use of a drug like psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression is demonstration of sustained benefit in patients who previously have experienced years of symptoms despite conventional treatments, which makes longer-term outcomes particularly important.
The data at 3 month follow-up (a comparatively short time in patients with extensive illness duration) are promising but not completely compelling, with about half the group showing significant depressive symptoms.
Further follow-ups using detailed qualitative interviews with patients and family could be very helpful in enriching the assessment.”

The study was published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry (Mithoefer et al., 2016).

Image credit: Valeria P.

This Simple Depression Treatment Takes Just 1.5 Hours

Could it be better than antidepressants and with fewer side-effects?

Inducing a mild fever in people with depression can relieve their symptoms for up to six weeks, new research finds.

The study suggests that ‘whole-body hyperthermia’ might be a useful new treatment for depression.

Dr. Charles Raison, who led the study, said:

“Our hope is to find better and faster-acting treatments for depression than the antidepressants currently in use.
We think that using heat to stimulate the skin activates serotonin-producing cells in the mid-brain, which then produce a change in how the brain functions.
In a way, one might think of this pathway from the skin to the brain as a deep-brain stimulator crafted by evolution.
We tap into this pathway because heat makes the brain feel happy.”

The small study included 16 people with depression who had their body temperature raised to 38.5 degrees Celsius or 101.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is around the temperature of a mild fever.

They were compared with another group who received a placebo treatment involving fans and lights which did not actually heat them up.

Dr Raison said:

“Our sham intervention was so realistic that most of the participants (10 of 14) thought they were receiving the real treatment.”

People in the real treatment condition were heated with infrared lights and coils over about an hour and half.

They were then left to cool down for around an hour.

Participant were followed up two, four and six weeks later.

Those who received the real treatment improved by about one level of depression severity.

For example, those who were moderately depressed reported only mild depression after the treatment, while those who were mildly depressed were ‘normal’ after the treatment.

Dr Raison said:

“We were surprised to see that the effect (of reduced depression symptoms) was still present six weeks after the initial treatment.”

The researchers think the treatment works partly because it stimulates parts of the brain involved in the regulation of mood, such as the orbitofrontal cortex.

Extreme heat may also help to shift people’s focus from their own thoughts onto what is going on in the outside world.

In other words it could be an adaptive response to the heat.

Hyperthermia has been used as a cancer treatment in Europe for years, but this is some of the first work applying it to depression.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Clemens et al., 2016).

Image courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Best Depression Treatment Targets Four Main Symptoms

Suicidal thoughts, hypersomnia and changes in appetite have the lowest symptom strength.

Suicidal thoughts, hypersomnia and changes in appetite have the lowest symptom strength.

Four symptoms are particularly important in the development of clinical depression, according to new research.

These are:

Loss of interest/pleasure,
depressed mood,
fatigue,
and concentration problems.

Although depression has many symptoms, some are more central than others.

These four emerged as the most central symptoms in that they were more strongly linked to other less common symptoms.

They were also the most likely to predict the onset of Major Depressive Disorder (commonly known simply as depression or clinical depression).

The results come from a study which included data from 501 people who had no symptoms of depression or anxiety at the beginning.

The authors describe the results:

“…overall, symptom strength was the highest for fatigue, concentration problems, loss of interest/pleasure and depressed mood.
In contrast, hypersomnia, suicidal thoughts and a decrease in weight/appetite had the lowest symptom strength.”

The study also suggests that targeting these symptoms may be the best way to treat depression:

“… a strategy that encourages a person to engage in pleasant activities does not only have the potential to improve (or prevent) a person’s ability to experience pleasure (symptom ‘loss of interest/pleasure’) but, subsequently, also his or her energy level (connected symptoms ‘fatigue’ and ‘psychomotor retardation’) and ability to concentrate (connected symptom ‘concentration problems’).”

This study confirms the work of previous research.

The new study was published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (Boschloo et al., 2016).

Looking At Plenty Of Trees Reduces Stress and Depression

The activity increases liveliness and reduces stress, depression and aggression.

The activity increases liveliness and reduces stress, depression and aggression.

Staring at some trees — even those in the city — can reliably reduce stress.

Even a small amount of exposure to trees is enough to boost mood.

And, the more dense the trees, the better, the study is the first to discover.

For the research, people were given mildly stressful tasks, such as preparing a speech and doing maths in front of a judges while being recorded.

Afterwards they were shown cityscapes in 360-degree videos.

The experimental trick was that the videos were manipulated to contain various amounts of trees.

They ranged from none to around 70% coverage.

The results showed that the more trees people saw in the cityscape, the quicker they recovered from their stressful talk or impromptu math torture.

Trees, it seems, are a little like medicine, the more you take, the bigger the effect (medical types call this a dose-response effect).

On the other hand, the side-effects of trees are restricted to feeling inadequate for not knowing their names and slipping on wet leaves.

It reminds me of shinrin-yoku or ‘forest bathing’, which I write about in 10 Remarkable Ways Nature Can Heal Your Mind:

“The Japanese are big fans of walking in the forest to promote their mental health.
The practice is called shinrin-yoku, which literally means ‘forest bathing’.
One study conducted by Japanese researchers has found that the practice is particularly useful for those suffering acute stress.
Their study of 498 people found that shinrin-yoku reduced hostility and depression as well as increasing people’s liveliness compared to comparable control groups.”

If you can’t find any trees near you, then the ocean will do to reduce your stress, according to this study I reported recently.

Should trees and water be beyond your reach, then try changing your desktop background to a forest.

When it all gets to much, minimise all your windows and stare at it longingly until a sense of deep and lasting peace returns…

…or until someone notices you’re not doing any work.

The study was published in the journal Environment and Behaviour (Jiang et al., 2016).

A Room With This View Linked To Better Mental Health

This is even better than having a view of a natural green space out of the window.

This is even better than having a view of a natural green space out of the window.

People who live with a water view have better mental health, new research finds.

It is the first research to find a link between ‘blue space’ (as opposed to ‘green space’) and mental well-being.

If you ever wondered why properties with a water view command such a premium, this could be part of the answer.

Dr Amber L. Pearson, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Increased views of blue space is significantly associated with lower levels of psychological distress.
However, we did not find that with green space.”

Other research, though, has found a link between green space and mental well-being:

Urban Living: Green Spaces Improve Your Mental Health

And even glancing at a simple grassy rooftop has some cognitive benefits:

The Surprising Mental Benefit To Glancing At a Grassy Rooftop for 40 Seconds

The research involved residential locations in Wellington, New Zealand.

The city is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean to the south and the Tasman Sea to the north.

The researchers took into account people’s sex, age, wealth and other factors, but still found a link between seeing water and better mental health.

The same effect was not seen for green spaces, but this might be a shortcoming of the research.

Dr Pearson said:

“It could be because the blue space was all natural, while the green space included human-made areas, such as sports fields and playgrounds, as well as natural areas such as native forests.
Perhaps if we only looked at native forests we might find something different.”

The study was published in the journal Health & Place (Nutsford et al., 2016).

Depression Treatment Heals Way More Than Just The Mind

The brain is not the only organ healed by prompt depression treatment.

The brain is not the only organ healed by prompt depression treatment.

Effective treatment of depression can also benefit heart health, a new study finds.

Depression treatment reduces the risk of heart failure, heart attack and stroke, the research found.

Dr Heidi May, part of the team involved in the study, said:

“Our study shows that prompt, effective treatment of depression appears to improve the risk of poor heart health.”

The results come from examining the medical records of 7,550 patients in the Intermountain Healthcare database.

They found that if untreated, depression led to around a 30% higher chance of cardiovascular risk.

Those who were successfully treated for depression, though, had the same cardiovascular risk as those who were not depressed.

Dr May said:

“With the help of past research, we know depression affects long-term cardiovascular risks, but knowing that alleviating the symptoms of depression reduces a person’s risk of heart disease in the short term, too, can help care providers and patients commit more fully to treating the symptoms of depression.
The key conclusion of our study is: If depression isn’t treated, the risk of cardiovascular complications increases significantly.”

Dr May continued:

“There’s little publically-available data about this question.
But now with the help of Intermountain’s depression registry, we have the ability to start answering some of these difficult questions.
What we’ve done thus far is simply observe data that has previously been collected.
In order to dig deeper, we need do a full clinical trial to fully evaluate what we’ve observed.”

The study was presented at the 2016 American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions in Chicago.

Image credit: dierk schaefer

How Family History of Depression Affects Chance of Mental Illness

Do depressive genes mean you will develop mental health problems?

Do depressive genes mean you will develop mental health problems?

A family history of depression alone does not determine whether you will suffer from depression, a new study finds.

Instead the environment is a major factor.

The conclusions come from a study which bred rats to be depressed.

After receiving “rat psychotherapy”, though, the rats returned to normal and demonstrated non-depressed blood biomarkers.

Professor Eva Redei, who led the study, said:

“The environment can modify a genetic predisposition to depression.
If someone has a strong history of depression in her family and is afraid she or her future children will develop depression, our study is reassuring.
It suggests that even with a high predisposition for depression, psychotherapy or behavioral activation therapy can alleviate it.”

Rat psychotherapy involves putting the rats in large cages which the authors describe as like ‘Disneyland’ (but presumably in a good way!).

The large cages contained lots of toys and places for them to play and hide.

The rats were put in their playground for a month before they were tested for depression.

How to tell if a rat is depressed

Here’s how you check if a rat is depressed: you put it in a tank of water.

If the rat swims around looking for an exit then it is not depressed.

If the rat just floats — it is depressed and has given up hope.

The study is good news for people with a family history of depression, Professor Redei said:

“You don’t have people who are completely genetically predisposed to depression the way the rats were.
If you can modify depression in these rats, you most certainly should be able to do it in humans.”

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Mehta-Raghavan et al., 2016).

DNA person image from Shutterstock

4 Ways That Heavy Social Media Use May Lead To Depression

How social media use is linked to depression and anxiety.

How social media use is linked to depression and anxiety.

The more young adults use social media, the more likely they are to be depressed, a new study concludes.

Those who reported checking social media sites more frequently had 2.7 times the chance of being depressed.

However, because of its design, the study can’t tell us that social media is causing depression.

Similarly it can’t tell us that depression causes social media use.

But there is certainly an association to be explained.

Ms Lui yi Lin, the study’s first author, said:

“It may be that people who already are depressed are turning to social media to fill a void.”

If high social media use does influence depression, the authors think there could be a variety of mechanisms:

Feeling worse in comparison to idealised representations of others (most people post photos of themselves happy and smiling and doing exciting things).
Wasting time in meaningless activities reduces mood.
Social media use could fuel internet addiction.
Being on social media could lead to cyber-bullying.

Professor Brian A. Primack, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Because social media has become such an integrated component of human interaction, it is important for clinicians interacting with young adults to recognize the balance to be struck in encouraging potential positive use, while redirecting from problematic use.”

Professor Primack concluded:

“All social media exposures are not the same. Future studies should examine whether there may be different risks for depression depending on whether the social media interactions people have tend to be more active vs. passive or whether they tend to be more confrontational vs. supportive.
This would help us develop more fine-grained recommendations around social media use.

The study was published in the journal Depression and Anxiety (Lin et al., 2016).

Image credit: Dimitris Kalogeropoylos

The Natural Dietary Add-On Found To Treat Anxiety and Even Major Depression

Anxiety reduced 20% on average by a common supplement.

Anxiety reduced 20% on average by a common supplement.

Omega-3 supplements reduce anxiety and even lower inflammation in healthy people.

A high quality study has shown that the supplement reduces anxiety by an average of 20%.

On top of this a new review of 13 separate studies containing 1,233 people has shown that omega-3 supplements can reduce symptoms of major depression (Mocking et al., 2016).

Professor Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, the anxiety study’s first author, said:

“We hypothesized that giving some students omega-3 supplements would decrease their production of proinflammatory cytokines, compared to other students who only received a placebo.
We thought the omega-3 would reduce the stress-induced increase in cytokines that normally arose from nervousness over the tests.”

The study recruited 68 healthy young medical students who were divided into groups, with half taking the supplement and others receiving a placebo.

Professor Martha Belury, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“The supplement was probably about four or five times the amount of fish oil you’d get from a daily serving of salmon, for example.”

The researchers had planned to test the effects of omega-3 on stressed people.

But, because of changes to the curriculum, the medical students were relatively relaxed during the study.

Professor Janice Kiecolt-Glaser explained:

“These students were not anxious.
They weren’t really stressed.
They were actually sleeping well throughout this period, so we didn’t get the stress effect we had expected.”

Despite this, those taking the supplements saw 20% reductions in anxiety, on average.

Professor Ron Glaser, another of the study’s authors, explained the measures and results:

“We took measurements of the cytokines in the blood serum, as well as measured the productivity of cells that produced two important cytokines, interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFa).
We saw a 14 percent reduction in the amounts of IL-6 among the students receiving the omega-3.
…anything we can do to reduce cytokines is a big plus in dealing with the overall health of people at risk for many diseases.”

Professor Belury concluded:

“It may be too early to recommend a broad use of omega-3 supplements throughout the public, especially considering the cost and the limited supplies of fish needed to supply the oil.
People should just consider increasing their omega-3 through their diet.”

The study was published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 2011).

Sad woman image from Shutterstock