What Are The Main Causes Of Depression?
Before treating bipolar disorder, it’s helpful to find out its root cause. Because often just identifying the main cause of any disorder is a big step towards figuring out how to address it.
Inherited From Your Parents
In 2006, a team scientists from around the world – led by Rockefeller University researchers – found a “depression gene” and named it “p11.” They found that this gene controls serotonin transmission in your brain. Since serotonin is the main mood chemical in your brain, you will be more apt to get depression if your serotonin levels are too low.
But if your p11 gene causes your serotonin levels to be below normal, you won’t necessarily get depression. You will, however, be more prone to be depressed but it’s not a given. Because depression is caused by a complex mixture of psychological causes and physical causes at the same time.
An example would be someone (whose p11 gene is faulty) that does not get depressed until the death of his or her wife or husband. Now, something like this will get anyone depressed, but the difference is this person stays unusually depressed and doesn’t recover; they’re not in mourning but really depressed for many months on end. (These are the people who would probably respond best to a drug like “Prozac” or any other Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor type of anti-depression medication.)
But it’s important to note that this will not, for example, bring back their deceased loved one–which was the “precipitating event” that launched them into depression. This is why it’s always best to treat depression with cognitive therapies (a fancy way of saying ‘talking with a trained therapist’ ), as well as with medicine like Prozac.
What’s another option to deal with this type of depression? Self help. Reading a step-by-step plan on overcoming depression. (More later…)
Anxiety From Stressful Event(s)
As in the above example, sometimes a single stressful event can cause someone to get depression (even though their serotonin levels may be normal). And a series of stressful things can cause you to be clinically depressed…
When I was just 16, I was so depressed that I tried to kill myself by driving my car as fast as it would go into trees lining a two-lane highway. (You will not believe I survived when you read my story.) But my suicide attempt was the culmination of a couple years of stress that included flunking school, getting in trouble with the law, girlfriend breaking up with me, and wrecking my car.
My amazing survival was a turning point in my life. I started looking for natural cures for depression because I knew that changing my life would involve much more than taking a pill like Prozac or some other SRI – “Serotonin Reuptake Inhibior.” (They weren’t around then anyway!) But I was determined to ‘outsmart’ my depression.
It’s Usually Multiple Stressors Over Time
Usually, it’s a series of events over time that gets people depressed. Take divorce, for example: Even though the word “divorce” describes a single event, it can lead to multiple highly stressful things happening to the divorcee all at once:
- Loss of a relationship: It was supposed to be “…to death do us part.”
- Financial security gives way to financial worry.
- No more nice house and car.
- Interaction with your own kids now becomes a privilege, not a right.
- Having to move when you aren’t ready. (Moving is, of course, stressful by itself.)
…You get the idea.
Taught To ‘Enjoy’ Depression
It is strange, but some folks actually enjoy the sadness of depression… They are ‘at home’ with this feeling because they feel it’s the most appropriate way to react to the death of a loved one or some other stressful event.
The real reasons for someone wallowing in depression are: One, it gets them personal one-on-one attention from people (their ‘caretakers’). And two, it gives them ‘permission’ to let their daily responsibilities of life slide; they can stay in bed ’til late and avoid cooking and cleaning, for example, and nobody will say anything derogatory about their ‘laziness.’
There’s one theory that holds they are “taught” to act this way at an early age:
If your parents habitually left you alone to play, figuring “…she’s happy, leave her alone,” and paid attention to you only if you cried, they unknowingly taught you a life lesson: You will get personal attention only if you are in distress.