What Causes Depression?
Different types of depression can have different causes. If you can pinpoint the cause, it goes a long way in helping you figure out how to treat 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 plays a role in serotonin transmission in your brain. Serotonin is the primary mood chemical in your brain, you will be more apt to get depression if your serotonin levels are not at the optimum level.
But you should know that a bad p11 gene doesn’t mean you will be depressed. It just means that you will be more apt to get depression. The reason for this is that depression is a very complex disease with not only physical causes but psychological ones as well.
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…)
Stressful Event(s)
Sometimes a single stressful event (as in the above example) can send someone into depression–even though their serotonin levels are normal. Or a combination of stressful events can cause some people to get 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 love
- Loss of financial security: “How am I going to pay off this debt?”
- Loss of a better standard of living… The house and car is downsized.
- Daily contact with your kids is no more.
- Having to move when you aren’t ready. (Moving is, of course, stressful by itself.)
…And so on–you get the general idea.
Taught To ‘Enjoy’ Depression
It sounds counter-intuitive, but for some people depression feels ‘right’ to them…sort of. They thrive on the drama of big emotional events. It’s like they thrive off the negativity like most other people thrive of being extremely happy. They feel that the importance of an event justifies being sad for a long time, so they do their best to be what they consider ‘appropriately sad.’
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.’
One theory is that they are “taught” this behavior as toddlers and young kids:
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.