Depression is the most common depressive disorder, characterized by significant and persistent depression as the main clinical feature, and is the main type of mood disorder.
So far, there are many different conclusions in medical science, but it can be determined that the incidence of depression is caused by comprehensive factors, mainly including: physiological genetic factors, psychological factors, and social and environmental factors.
Biological factors mainly involve genetics, neurobiody, neuroendocrine, nerve regeneration and other aspects;
Psychological predispositions closely related to depression are pre-illness personality traits, such as depressive temperament.
Experiencing stressful life events in adulthood is an important trigger for the emergence of clinically significant depressive episodes.
However, these factors do not play alone, emphasizing that the interaction between genetic and environmental or stressors, and the point at which such interactions occur, have an important impact on the onset of depression.
Genetic and physiological factors
It mainly includes genetics, neurotransmitters and other aspects.
Immediate family members with depression are 10-20 times more likely to develop depression than the average person, and women are more affected by genetic factors than men.
On the other hand: the secretion of various neurotransmitters in the brain, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, etc., directly affects our emotional response.
1. Dopamine
There are only about 400,000 neurons in the central nervous system with dopamine as a transmitter, a small number, but they are projected into many brain areas in complex pathways, producing a wealth of functions such as control, motivation, cognition, and rewards.
For example, in the midbrain there is a neural nucleus called "substantia nigra", and a "nigra-striatine pathway" leads upward to the caudate nucleus and shell nucleus, which determines whether our limb movements can be coordinated and balanced.
From the ventral covered area near the substantia nigra, there are two more dopamine pathways.
One is closely related to our motivations for acting. When it comes alive, we are interested in what we are doing and feel comfortable from the current environment, such as the good experience of love is related to dopamine, and chocolate is often associated with love because it contains additional dopamine.
Another has to do with our ability to control ourselves: dopamine manifests itself in this pathway as impulse inhibition, making behavior more rational.
At the same time, the striatillary nigra pathway and the midbrain limbic system pathway together make up the brain's reward system: when we learn new skills and achieve new achievements, the reward system creates a sense of satisfaction in time.
However, this reward system will give fewer and fewer rewards for the same achievements, forcing us to pursue greater success.
There is no doubt that this is the key driving force for us human beings to climb all the heights in science, art, politics and all other fields. However, there are always some things in the world that make it easy for the brain to make large amounts of dopamine, such as sweets, games, sex, and buying and buying, which can often make people addicted to them and subjectively feel comfortable – of course, technological advances have also brought a new source of dopamine.
2. Brain
The brain is the commander-in-chief of the human body, the commander of the human tissue, and directs the normal work of various departments of the human body.
For example, the central lobe of the brain, the central anterior gyrus injury, may not be able to move the foot, the hand can not move, the face can not move, or the tongue can not move. Some hypertensive cerebral hemorrhages, which destroy the central lobe's contact with the muscles, will cause hemiplegia in the limbs.
Another example is the frontal lobe. Some patients have brain tumors near the inferior frontal retracement, although the tumor is removed, but the frontal lobe is damaged at this time, then it will be impossible to speak, and the language function will be lost. Or the frontal eye area. This area is in charge of the rotation of the eyeballs, scanning. If the tumor is destroyed to the frontal eye area, then the human eye is biased.
For a brain surgery, the doctor will usually explain to relatives that the sequelae may occur after the brain surgery. Common ones are hemiplegia, can't speak, hands and feet can't move, eyes are deflected, etc., and some don't even wake up, and so on. Depending on the location of the patient's brain tumor or cerebral hemorrhage, there will be different sequelae.
There's also an unknown sequelae of brain surgery -- it's depression.
Yes, you read that right. Depression also arises in this way, because depression is a physiological disease, a chronic physiological disease of the brain. A happy and energetic person, if you turn on his brain and tinker with it, can become depressed.
For example, when the location of the tumor is near the amygdala of a person, the amygdala is just growing at the end of the hippocampus, and the amygdala and the hippocampus just act on the brain's stress response.
3. Amygdala and hippocampus
The amygdala is the control of people's emotions, the control of people regulates emotions, control, memory, the hippocampus is the storage of memory. These two things are damaged, can not manage people's emotions well, can not regulate the stress tissue of the brain, chaotic emotions interfere with the secretion of neurotransmitters, which can easily lead to depression.
Depression is medically quite different from what you understand.
Depression is not a psychological problem, nor is it a mental illness, depression is medically classified as a mental illness, and it is a mental illness with physiological as the basis of pathology.
Therefore, at home and abroad, the means of treating depression is first of all drugs, and these drugs also focus on the brain, promote the operation of brain tissue, promote the secretion of brain neurotransmitters, so that the patient's symptoms are alleviated, and on the basis of mitigation, psychotherapy is done.
Because psychological disorders are derived from physiology. Drugs are the mainstay, supplemented by psychological construction.
Personality factors
1. Sensitive
Sensitivity is also one of the psychological factors, also known as depression susceptibility factors. It's not that sensitivity is bad, it's that sensitive people are more likely to have depressed moods than others.
Emotional vulnerability is not really fragile, but sensitive people are more likely to feel subtle changes in themselves and others, and these changes are easy to produce negative emotions if they are distorted and misunderstood.
For example, a colleague stares at you for a while without a clear reason.
Sensitive people will wonder: Did you offend him, or did he have any opinion about himself?
Do ordinary people ask each other directly if there is something wrong?
People with large nerves may not think about anything at all, what they should do.
It can be seen that sensitive people have greater emotional fluctuations than ordinary people.
As long as it is adjusted in time, it will not affect the normal work and life without any problems. Some art and design jobs need this sensitivity more in order to create more beautiful things.
Therefore, there is no right or wrong in personality, we must correctly understand and evaluate ourselves, try not to be negatively affected by personality, but play its strengths.
2. Personality factors
Psychological factors closely related to depression are temperamental traits in personality.
For example:
Sensitivity – refers to the degree of sensitivity to surrounding stimuli, and mental quality – refers to the degree of emotional stability, which is most closely related to depression;
We often say perfectionist tendencies, these are all predisposing factors for depression, and people with such personality traits are more likely to fall into depression than others.
Socio-environmental and economic factors
1. Social and environmental factors
For adolescent depression, the most important environmental factor is the family, the most important of which is the parenting style of the child.
For example, parental punishment, indifference, and even hostility toward children can lead to a greater likelihood that a child will suffer from depression.
On the contrary, for children at high risk of depression, in a harmonious and warm family environment, children can also be protected from depression.
Marriage problems are a direct trigger for depression in many people. Especially important for children, stress in the family, and even violence, lays a time bomb for subsequent onsets of depression in adolescence/adulthood.
2. Economic level
Contrary to the so-called "common sense", the lower the income, the easier it is to get depression.
In pre-urbanized China, the incidence of depression in rural areas was much higher than in cities, reflected in a small number of studies and the high rate of rural suicide recognized by the government; this situation has been reversed by the large-scale urbanization process in recent years, and several studies have concluded that the suicide rate in China has dropped sharply in recent years, thanks to the urbanization process. What will happen in the future is unknown.
3. Gender
The number of female patients has tripled that of men.
In addition to physiological factors, girls have to be stressed in other aspects, such as serious sexual assault, the degree of difference may be very common, in some genres of psychotherapy may be the focus.
Women's average income is low, and women face some unequal situations in heterosexual relationships. Women grow up under pressure from social families.
Women and men may differ in self-esteem, self-concept, and the way they cope with social interactions, which are risk factors for depression.
Native family shadows
It is related to people's growth environment and experience. In layman's terms, it is the education of childhood and the original family. A small number of people are genetic, which is a minority.
What a person looks like in adulthood can be traced in childhood. Childhood hid a person's password.
Many people will say that depression is also related to their own personality, and it can be said that this character can be changed through the love and education of parents when they are young. Because the human brain is not static, personality will slowly change with time and experience.
Many depressed people have a bad childhood experience, and most patients present a state of extreme lack of love and insecurity.
Their parents may often quarrel and be violent; parents may divorce early; some parents may often yell at people with verbal violence; some parents are too busy at work and rarely discipline their children; at the age of growth, they cannot get the love and education that parents should have, and they are deeply trapped in the negative energy of the family.
Children's brain development is not sound, and children's brains are in a state of development. At this time, the soil for brain development is the parents' ignorance, quarrels, violence, and indifference.
The soil for growth is full of negative energy, which will stimulate the development of brain tissue, which will bury the hidden danger of depression.
Family love and education is the first step in the growth of children, and it is also the most powerful umbrella for the brain and mood.
Among depressions, adolescent depression is the most difficult to treat, followed by adults.
Why?
Because adolescents' brains and moods are not yet fully developed, broken brains and moods cannot resist depression. Adults, on the other hand, are more or less developing. Compared with teenagers, more mature and sound.
Most adult depression is more or less related to childhood, related to the environment and experience of growing up.
That is to say, the poor childhood environment, family growth environment, unfortunate adolescence is depressed, lucky point to adulthood, but also than children with love family, the probability of depression is higher.
False self
The reason for depression is because of the traumatic situations of childhood that we must suppress the real emotional responses that are key to suffering, and these real emotional experiences are suppressed, contained, and adapted to bad situations so that people are not fully free to develop their emotional autonomy!
Because we are not allowed to react to our true emotions, we are forced to accept the demands of our parents' unconscious emotional system and develop a "false self" under the pressure of bad situations.
This false self serves as a fixed role or persona for us to adapt to that upbringing. It helps us mediate those specific encounters, situations, and experiences.
The false self often develops later into an "ego" on which we attach our sense of worth, which is either a sense of superiority, arrogance, or a good sense of self. The basis and basis of its existence is the recognition of the outside world, rather than the real state of spontaneous and autonomous emotional development.
Our real emotions and needs don't really develop with age because of the potential containment in our early years.
Like the beautiful reflection of the self that Nathots fell in love with in the fable of the daffodil, we create in our minds (and are often cooperated by some people) a grand projection of ourselves and mistakenly think that this is who we are!!
In this case, when the false self is shaken, collapsed, and disintegrated in later life due to the setbacks of reality, the problems covered by the original false images will inevitably be exposed, and the state of depression will inevitably appear.
Since childhood, emotional over-adjustment, the emotional need to take care of parents and the external demands have led to the lack of true self.
The body's self-protection
The incidence of maternal depression during pregnancy is about 10%, and the incidence of postpartum depression is as high as 15%-30%, and many experts believe that prenatal and postpartum depression is mainly due to the ups and downs in the body's hormone levels before and after childbirth.
It is true that the changes in hormones in the body are the biggest and most pronounced changes in this particular period in this particular population, but we also want to see a few other factors:
First of all, pregnant mothers often have a very serious morning sickness reaction, so bad that they have to vomit when drinking water, and some people vomit from pregnancy to the delivery bed, which is a great challenge for the diet and body of the mother who wants to conceive the baby;
Secondly, pregnancy will make the mother's belly bigger and bigger, it is difficult to sleep peacefully at night, and the uterine compression of the bladder makes the expectant mother have to get up several times at night to go to the toilet, which greatly reduces the sleep quality of the expectant mother.
After saying this group with a high incidence of depression, let's take a look at our ordinary people, please think back, before depression, did you have a long-term habit of staying up late? Have you not eaten well in a long time? Have you ever felt stressed by some kind of emergency, nervousness, anxiety, bad mood?
If it has just been secretly closed, then it can be concluded that our depression is quite closely related to the three conditions of long-term poor sleep, irregular diet, and mood fluctuations.
They can be said to be the mechanism that triggers depression.
However, depression can also be said to be a self-preservation mechanism of your body, it really can't see that you are so neglectful of your body and emotions, so it tries everything to make you stop, let you take good care of your body and emotions, and let you learn to really cherish yourself.
So, please relax and stop feeling helpless and frightened about your situation, this is just a very helpless self-protection made by your body, maybe this way is extreme, but please don't be afraid, take a deep breath, and tell your body:
I know, from today on, I will take good care of myself, I am willing to start eating well, sleep well, I will not criticize and blame myself when I am not happy, I will encourage myself and make myself better and better.
There is nothing more important in this world than my body and emotions, so rest assured that I will do my best to take good care of myself!
The internalization of anger
In recent days, a relative of mine has encountered a very angry thing.
He moved into his new home more than a year ago, which would have been a happy thing. However, he soon had a very abnormal situation in the upstairs residents, often knocking on things at home from midnight to six o'clock in the morning, chopping things, moving furniture, doing housework, dropping things to the ground, as well as footsteps and closing doors, which greatly affected the sleep of his family.
He thought that the tenant was upstairs, asked the housekeeper of the property, and learned that it was not the tenant, but the owner himself.
The housekeeper kindly told him that if he encountered such noise at night again, he could call the people at the property and let them stop it. But my relatives didn't want to freeze the relationship, thinking that they might get used to trying to endure it, so they didn't say it until they couldn't stand it anymore.
When he negotiated with the owner of the upstairs many times and then went upstairs to find the other party to show his feelings, where he knew that he met the owner's wife, the first sentence of the first meeting said that he was mentally ill. And the reason for the upstairs owner is: you have lived for more than a year without problems, and now suddenly there is a problem, it must be your psychological problems, you have to correct your mentality. Besides, the nearby viaduct is so noisy, our family is nothing!
Fortunately, my relatives were mentally strong enough to understand things, and after thinking about it for a day, they finally wanted to understand that his fault was not a psychological problem, but that he had been patient, connived at the evil of the other party, and finally gave the other party a reason to hit himself.
The fact that he endured for a year does not mean that he is used to this incorrect behavior.
Although the viaduct is noisy, it can be solved by closing the doors and windows, and the sound of the viaduct at night is very uniform, rather than "banging" on the overhead every once in a while.
So many seemingly unrelated examples have been laid out above, but they are actually just trying to elicit the ultimate psychological view: the real root of depression is the internalization of anger. The event itself does not hurt us, and our view of the event will.
When a person feels anger, he may not be able to show anger for various reasons, such as fear, helplessness, habits, etc., he can only internalize the anger, let the angry emotions attack him, feel incompetent, useless, and eventually depression.
And this process, most people who have not systematically studied psychology will not understand.
When a person is bullied for a long time in the growth environment, when a person is not strong enough when he becomes an adult, his heart will consciously fear to vent his anger and vent it to the object that should be borne, which is a very normal psychological protection mechanism, imperceptibly so that he himself cannot detect it.
So why isn't Gu Qiu Tsai depressed?
Because they are rarely patient and will vent their anger with their fists and knives, they never blame themselves and therefore do not get depressed.
Why do people who do good deeds commit suicide?
Because they are angry with those people, but helpless, their worldview does not teach them how to deal with those who are ungrateful, they will think that they are not doing well enough to satisfy those who are desperate, and at the same time they are disappointed in the world, good and old or weak, they can not vent their anger, so they can only mourn suicide or die of illness or depression to survive.
Why are people who are not afraid of death afraid of gossip?
Because the educational and cultural influence they have received has buried their nature, so that they do not dare to be angry with the whole world, in the end they can only internalize their anger and attack themselves, thinking that everything is their fault, they do not obey the way of women, so they commit suicide.
If you are a person who has not been blinded by the culture of ignorance, even if he dies, he must vent his anger to the world and be killed in battle, which is the most appropriate way.
What is my relative's biggest problem?
He procrastinated and did not want to express his anger, and after being rejected by the other party, he almost internalized and attacked himself for feeling that he was really mentally ill. If he's not sober enough, the next thing is definitely depression.
Most people have been hurt and suppressed in the process of growing up, they already have transparent glass plates on their psychology, they are afraid of being crushed by the outside world, so they can only hide their anger, internalize and attack themselves, feel incompetent, and then they are depressed, which is a vicious circle in the long run, and the most serious situation may be death.
Of course, venting your anger to the outside world definitely requires ways and means, not chaos. Otherwise, just like the social youth said before, the pain will have to be endured by themselves.
However, people still have to abandon the hurt they have suffered, discard some outdated lessons, and continue to stretch their emotions and spread their wings to the world.
While it is likely to fail and be hit again, if you don't try, you don't know where the bottom line of the transparent ceiling is. In the process of doing it, you will regain experience, find that people in the outside world are not as powerful and terrible and fierce as they think, and find that things in the outside world are not as difficult as they think. This will alleviate the fear in your heart and reduce the attack on yourself.
It must be done, and there is a way to do it!
When a person has such a perception, the best solution to venting anger to resolve depression is to reach out to people more and expand their social circle.
Because from friends, acquaintances and weak relationships you can get information, bring opportunities, get help, and soothe your mood.
Most importantly, when a person knows that others are not gods and is not much better than you, when a person has suffered enough in society, his fear of the outside world will be extremely reduced, and he can properly express his feelings and vent his anger, and ultimately solve the problem of depression.
Depression is a complex (not just a single) disorder, which is based on physiological susceptibility, interacts with the external environment, and feeds back into itself to exhibit a series of dynamic processes that we call "depressive symptoms."
Depression is a combination of a vast system, not something that can be addressed by a single gene, neurotransmitter, nerve cell, mental pattern, or an environmental event like yesterday's love loss.
Whether it is a witness to depression or a companion, they are all respectable people, and just this process is down, and they are already brave.
There is light in the heart, and the future can be expected!
Source: Gretel Psychology (ID: zzgrtxl)