Clinical depression has been linked to other mental illnesses, such as anxiety disorders, panic disorder, social phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder. Together, these conditions affect millions of Americans. Fortunately, these disorders are treatable, and those affected can lead normal, productive lives.
Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders (F4) were by far the most prevalent comorbidity in depression, irrespective of depression severity; 65% of severe depression cases (52% of mild and 61% of moderate cases) had additionally received an F4-diagnosis.
Depression Increases Your Risk of Physical Illness
Depression increases your risk of a number of diseases and other conditions by, for example, increasing levels of stress hormones such as cortisol or adrenaline. Depression can affect the immune system, making it harder for your body to fight infection.
There's no single cause of depression. It can occur for a variety of reasons and it has many different triggers. For some people, an upsetting or stressful life event, such as bereavement, divorce, illness, redundancy and job or money worries, can be the cause. Different causes can often combine to trigger depression.
Depression results from a complex interaction of social, psychological, and biological factors. People who have gone through adverse life events (unemployment, bereavement, traumatic events) are more likely to develop depression.
In fact, depression is one of the most common complications of chronic illness. It's estimated that up to one-third of people with a serious medical condition have symptoms of depression. It's not hard to see the cause and effect relationship between chronic illness and depression.
Untreated clinical depression is a serious problem. Untreated depression increases the chance of risky behaviors such as drug or alcohol addiction. It also can ruin relationships, cause problems at work, and make it difficult to overcome serious illnesses.
People with anxiety can have that feeling all of the time, and then have those symptoms increase to diarrhea or migraine when their anxiety and stressors increase,” Jones says. When physical symptoms are caused or made worse by your mental state, it's called psychosomatic.
Individuals with MDD often have comorbid disorders such as substance use disorders, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The presence of these comorbid disorders in those diagnosed with MDD increases their risk of suicide.
Women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression. Depression can occur at any age.
Early studies of anosognosia indicated that approximately 30% of people with schizophrenia and 20% of people with bipolar disorder experienced "severe" lack of awareness of their diagnosis. Treating mental health conditions is much more complicated if lack of insight is one of the symptoms.
People with SMD have an approximately one to three times higher risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality compared to the general population. People with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have double the risk for diabetes compared to the general population while people with depression have 1.5 times the risk.
A depression not only makes a person feel sad and dejected – it can also damage the brain permanently, so the person has difficulties remembering and concentrating once the disease is over. Up to 20 percent of depression patients never make a full recovery.
Research suggests that depression doesn't spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. Rather, there are many possible causes of depression, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, and stressful life events.
Major depressive disorder isn't something that eventually “passes.” While most people feel sad at times in their lives, major depression is when a person is in a depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks.
Objective. Stressful life events are associated with an increase in depressive symptoms and the onset of major depression. Importantly, research has shown that the role of stress changes over the course of depression.
Illness-related anxiety and stress also can trigger symptoms of depression. Depression is common among people who have chronic illnesses such as: Alzheimer's disease.
Chronic pain causes a number of problems that can lead to depression, such as trouble sleeping and stress. Disabling pain can cause low self-esteem due to work or financial issues or the inability to participate in social activities and hobbies. Depression doesn't just occur with pain resulting from an injury.
You might worry that you could develop or 'catch' the same illness as your ill parent – but you cannot catch a mental illness from anyone. People might say 'it runs in families' or talk about the genetics or genes causing the illness.