Major Depressive Mood Disorder

Difficulty of Finding Mood Disorders

Many people have it comorbid with another illness and it’s therefore not often found

Major Depressive disorder:

• DSM 4 criteria: people feel sad and helpless every day for weeks at a time, have little energy, feel worthless, contemplate suicide, have trouble sleeping, cannot concentrate, get little pleasure from sex/food, can hardly imagine being happy again
• Absence of happiness is a more reliable symptom than sadness
• Occurs at any age, approximately 2x more in women than men

Genetics and Life Events:

• Moderate degree of heritability
• Close relatives of people with depression are more likely to get many disorders, not just depression, and mostly with women who have an early onset
• It’s related to many different genes
• One specific gene controls the serotonin transporter protein, that protein controls the ability of an axon to reabsorb serotonin after release, the effect has to do with peoples experiences: stressful experiences AND the gene together is dangerous

Hormones:

• It occurs in episodes, not constantly: lasts for month, goes away for years and then comes back
• One trigger could be stress, which releases cortisol, prolonged high levels can exhaust the body’s energies, impair sleep, impair the immune system and set the stage for depression
• 20% of women experience postpartum depression (after giving birth)
• For vulnerable women hormonal changes can trigger an episode of depression
• Estradiol was shown to relieve it in menopausal women
• Childhood depression is equally as common in boys and girls, then beginning puberty it’s 2x as common in women than men, they don’t know why yet

Abnormalities of Hemispheric Dominance:

• They found a strong relationship between happy mood and increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex
• Most depressed people have decreased activity in the left and increased activity in the right prefrontal cortex
• Many people become seriously depressed after left-hemisphere damage, fewer after damage to the right one

Viruses

• Brona disease: priods of frantic activity alternating with periods of inactivity (only for farm animals)
• It predisposes people to psychiatric difficulties in general, not specifically depression

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Category: Biological Psychology, Psychology