What Causes 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 Or Grandparents
In early ’06, Rockefeller University researchers–with the help of an international team of scientists–identified a “depression gene” called p11. Evidently this gene controls serotonin transmission in your brain. And in case you didn’t know, serotonin is the main ‘mood chemical’ in your brain; if you don’t have enough floating around your brain, you will be prone to depression.
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.)
However, anti-depression medication will not bring back a deceased loved one, which was the event (a.k.a. the “precipitating event”) that got the depression started. And this is why it’s important to treat depression with therapy such as cognitive therapy, in addition to taking medicine.
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)
Even though your serotonin levels may be normal, a single stressful event (like in the above example) can make someone clinically depressed. And sometimes it’s a combination of events that can make some folks develop depression…
I was so depressed at one time that I tried to kill myself by driving over 130 mph into a bunch of trees. (The fact that it was a “bunch of trees” instead of just one big tree is one reason I’m here with you now.) But when you read my story you will nevertheless be astounded I survived. I was only 16.
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
The word, “divorce” may mean a single event, but it encompasses multiple highly stressful events all at once:
- Loss of a relationship: It was supposed to be “…to death do us part.”
- Your plan of saving money together and buying something nice with your combined money vanishes into thin air.
- No more nice house and car.
- Loss of contact with your own children…no need to explain the huge stress this is.
- Being forced to move. (Moving–by itself–is one of the most stressful events a person can endure–forced or not.)
…And so on–you get the general idea.
Taught To ‘Enjoy’ Depression
I know this sounds weird, but some people actually enjoy being depressed. Well, not exactly, but they really ‘get into’ the drama of emotional events. For these people, getting depressed is the equivalent of being extremely happy about something positive, only it’s the opposite; they feel the significance of the negative event justifies long-term sadness.
When in reality, they are embracing depression for two reasons: It enables them to escape daily responsibilities and it gets them the personal attention they crave from caretakers and friends (who would otherwise basically ignore them).
Psychologists tell us one theory is that they are “taught” this behavior as toddlers:
If your parents rarely paid attention to you unless you cried, you learned that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” as the old saying goes; as long as you were in distress, people paid attention to you and comforted you.