Depression: how to get away from black thoughts?

As soon as someone complains about a depressive state, many begin to look at him with an involuntary reproach. “Pull yourself together, pull yourself together,” is often said in response. Many are sure that a person just does not know how or does not want to control his mood and makes an elephant out of a fly.

“This is because we often confuse depression with sadness, melancholy, blues,” explains psychiatrist Elena Vrono. – It seems to us a temporary condition like a runny nose or a bruise from a bruise – something that goes away by itself. However, depression is a real disease.”

Research by neurophysiologists shows that its impact on human health can be extremely dangerous. But depression is treatable. Antidepressants and psychotherapy come to the rescue. What are the causes of this disease? How does it manifest itself? And what should we do if we ourselves or a loved one get sick?

How to tell if it’s depression

Not every negative experience indicates a state of depression. Sadness, sadness, longing are separate emotions, and depression involves a complex combination of feelings, ideas, memories and thoughts.

“So, throughout life, we repeatedly experience sadness, which becomes an adequate response to separation, disappointment, failure, or loss,” says American psychologist Carroll Izard in the book The Psychology of Emotions (Peter, 2008). “With depression, sadness is complemented by other emotions – most often shame, loss of self-esteem and aggression that a person feels towards himself.”

If your loved ones or you yourself have begun to look at life too gloomily, it is important to understand what you are dealing with – with a strong emotional experience of some events in life or with a mental disorder.

“Depressed mood, loss of interest in life, loss of strength, apathy, when nothing brings pleasure. Noticeable loss of appetite and weight. Insomnia or drowsiness. Restlessness or lethargy. Decreased performance, impaired memory and concentration. Loss of the meaning of life. If most of these signs appear constantly and for at least two weeks, it is most likely depression, ”says Elena Vrono.

It is also known that the tendency to take personally everything that is said, especially unpleasant ones (“it’s my fault”, “I’m always unlucky”), is also a sign of depressive states. “It is important to know,” continues Elena Vrono, “that the symptoms of depression can manifest themselves both in a fairly mild form and be of a pronounced painful nature.”

Two reasons: heredity and stress

Depression is studied by different specialists: neurophysiologists, biochemists, geneticists, endocrinologists, psychologists. And they all agree that this disease is caused by two main factors: hereditary predisposition and the environment in which a person grows and lives.

A group of scientists led by professors Jorge Ballesteros and Blanca Martinez from the University of Granada (Spain) conducted a study. They proved the connection between the occurrence of depression and the special structure of one of the genes associated with the mechanism of transfer of serotonin, a neurotransmitter responsible for our mood.

It turned out that in carriers of this genotype, the trigger of depression can be the most insignificant stress. Those who have a different structure of this gene are not subject to depression at all.

Meanwhile, there is another view on the occurrence of this disease. “Obviously, depression has a family origin,” writes the American psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams in the book “Psychoanalytic Diagnosis” (Klass, 2015), “but so far we cannot assess to what extent this disease is transmitted genetically, and to what extent the depressive behavior of parents becomes reason for the similar behavior of their children.

“The postpartum depression of the mother, which is accompanied by depression, detachment, anxiety, the inability to feel the needs of the baby, strongly affects him and contributes to the emergence of a predisposition to this disease,” psychoanalyst Vitaly Zimin agrees. “The fact is that the boundaries of the “I” in infancy are very blurred, the child still does not separate himself and those around him, and experiences maternal depression as his own.”

In other words, the presence of an “adverse” genotype cannot be called a necessary condition for the formation of depressive disorders. Moreover, warm, trusting relationships in the family reduce the risk of disease, even if there is a genetic predisposition to them.

In a vicious circle

Most of the work on the study of depression is based on measuring the neural activity of the brain. What happens in it when we read, think, feel any emotions? Determining how the brains of those suffering from depression compare to those who are healthy can provide a better understanding of which treatments will be effective.

Psychologists and psychiatrists at the University of Wisconsin (USA) were the first to use the method of electromagnetic resonance to see the connection between brain activity and the ability to control emotions.

The participants in the experiment looked at images that caused strong negative feelings (traffic accidents, grins of angry animals), and mentally tried to reduce their emotional reaction. To do this, they imagined a positive outcome of the situation or presented it only as a frame from a film that had nothing to do with real life.

It turned out that all healthy people are able to consciously manage their emotions, but in those suffering from depression, mental efforts do not affect their intensity. In addition, the more they make an effort to be aware and control emotions, the more they are ignited, falling into a vicious circle of gloomy thoughts.

Dr. Johnstone, one of the authors of the study, believes that depression disrupts the systems of neural connections between different centers of the brain: the control center is unable to send a “calming” signal to the center of emotions.

Another study – by French neurophysiologists – confirmed the existence of a zone in the brain that is responsible for the tendency to “personalize”, to attribute information to oneself personally. It turned out that in healthy people this zone is active only when they think about themselves. In depressed people, this zone is activated in response to any questions, especially those with negative connotations.

When a depressed person is asked: “What do you think about stinginess, greed? ..” – he perceives the question as if he was being asked: “Do you have a similar flaw?” And he tends to answer in the affirmative. So, when depressed people say that “it is stronger than them” and they cannot react differently, they can be trusted: the perception of the world does not depend on their desire. But this can be corrected.

There is an exit

So, everyone who is experiencing depression perceives life in a black color, evaluates what is happening from a negative point of view, because this is how their brain dysfunction manifests itself. “However, fortunately, these processes are reversible,” says Elena Vrono. “The persistent tendency to notice and replay negative information in your head can be eliminated.”

It is interesting to compare how the two main directions in the treatment of depression work – treatment with the use of special medications, antidepressants, and cognitive psychotherapy. It turns out that both of these changes the biology of the brain. Moreover, psychotherapy, by forcing patients to work on the “negative thoughts-negative emotions” connection, has a direct impact on those areas of the brain that are responsible for the personalized perception of negative information.

It often happens that, experiencing the most severe mental discord, depression, we are delaying a visit to a specialist, we hope to cope with them with our own efforts. However, this hope is false.

“At the heart of depression-related disorders of emotions, memory, and thinking are violations of biochemical processes that can really be corrected with the help of modern medicines, as well as psychotherapy,” says Elena Vrono. – Moreover, the correct treatment is purely individual, there can be no general advice. There is only one rule here: if you treat mental pain pragmatically and seek help in time, you can be sure that it is treated.