Over 15 million people in the United States suffer from depression, says DepressionStatistics.com. Depression is highly treatable with therapy and medication, but unfortunately many depressed people never seek for help. This leads to a chronic depression that can have a profound effect on a person's health. Depressed person often become socially isolated, stop taking care of themselves and start abusing drugs and alcohol. Many develop physical illnesses or commit suicide.
Clinical Depression
Every one of us feels depressed sometimes. It is a normal reaction to a loss such as a death of a loved one. Yet if depressed mood lasts for more than two weeks and is seriously affecting a person's life, he is said to suffer from a clinical depression. Typical symptoms of depression include loss of interest in activities that used to interest the sufferer, feeling sad and hopeless, insomnia or sleeping too much, changed eating patterns such as loss of appetite or eating too much and being unable to concentrate. Suicidal thoughts can also appear. If left untreated, clinical depression can become chronic and last for years, causing numerous long-term effects.
Substance Abuse
Substance abuse and depression go hand in hand, even in acute depression. EverydayHealth.com states that 21 percent of the depressed patients also abuse drugs or alcohol. Many depressed people begin to abuse alcohol or drugs because they try to self-medicate themselves, says EverydayHealth.com. What people often do not realize is that alcohol, for example, is a depressant and only worsens the symptoms of depressed people. When depression becomes chronic, the substance abuse becomes even more common and can often be accompanied by violence and crimes. EverydayHealth says that depression and substance abuse are linked due to several reasons. For example, they affect the same brain regions, the same genes have been shown to put the person at risk for both depression and substance abuse and the same environmental factors such as trauma or stress are known to prompt both substance abuse and stress.
Physical Illnesses
Depressed people often neglect taking care of themselves. They eat too much or too little, do not exercise and fail to see their doctor regularly. After such long-term neglect, it is not surprising that many depressed patients develop physical illnesses. Interestingly, depression also causes physiological changes, such as changes in cortisol metabolism, that may put a person at an elevated for many illnesses says Judith H. Lichtman, Ph.D., and colleagues in a study published in "Circulation" Journal in September 2008. Chronic depression has been linked to such illnesses as cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, obesity and cancer, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates that people will mental illnesses are at risk of dying 25 years prematurely from chronic diseases. Importantly, not only is depression linked to becoming diagnosed with certain physical illnesses later on, but it also seem to predict what the outcome of the illness is going to be says Dr. Lichtman. Depressed patients are much less likely to survive cancer, for example, than non-depressed people.
Suicide
Depression is among the leading causes of mortality among young people says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) over 90 percent of the people who die of suicide suffered from a mental illness such as depression. Depressed men are four times as likely to die of suicide than women, but women attempt a suicide more often than men, says the NIMH. Suicide is particularly common among depressed people who are socially isolated and live in rural areas.
Depression Treatments
Many of the long-term effects of depression can be prevented if the patients search for help when they begin to feel depressed. P. Cuijpers, Ph.D, studied the effects of psychotherapy on depression in over 700 subjects and discovered that it not only decreased depression in most subjects but also prevented the onset of major depression in some cases. The study was published in "Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica" in June 2007. Psychotherapy alone is effective in treating mild depression, but when the patient suffers from a more severe depression, medication is needed in addition to psychotherapy, says Dr. Reynolds in a study published in "New England Journal of Medicine" in March 2006.
References
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Public Health Surveillance for Mental Health
- Circulation: "Depression and Coronary Heart Disease"
- The National Institute of Mental Health: "Suicide in the U.S.: Statistics and Prevention"
- EverydayHealth: "Depression and Substance Abuse"
- DepressionStatisttics: "Depression Statistics"
