- 23 Apr 2009
• Serious physical disease is a common cause of depression. In the acute phase of a serious disease at least a quarter of patients become depressed, according to one US study of 150 people in hospital for physical ailments. Several studies have found a high correlation between suicide and physical illness. Rheumatoid arthritis, peptic ulcer, and high blood pressure, were found to have the greatest ‘suicide’ potential in one study.
Chronic illness and disability can, undoubtedly, make people depressed. For some such people depression becomes a way of life.
Talking of chronic disease, several surveys have found that people who are depressed stand a much greater chance of dying prematurely of cancer than do others of the same age.
• ’Glandular’ problems can sometimes cause depression. Thyroid disease is a fairly common cause.
Food allergies and intolerances are an increasingly recognized cause of depression. Foods especially likely to be at fault are cows’ milk, eggs, nuts, and wheat and its products. Elimination diets can be useful in detecting the culprit but results can take several weeks (as opposed to days with other food-allergy manifestations) so one has to be very careful in the early stages to be sure that the diet is not so poor that this adds to the clinical problem. Taking plenty of water, minerals and vitamin supplements will definitely help.
• Babies and children are a major source of depression. One of the most depressed groups of people in the West is the group of young children’s mothers. Post-natal depression is extremely common, with eight out of ten women complaining of at least some ‘baby blues’. Women who deliver at home have much lower levels of depression post-natally, as do those whose babies are exclusively breast-fed.
• Success. We have been conditioned into thinking of depression as caused by failure and negative life events but a small minority of people become depressed when they achieve goals and are successful. Some see their success as undeserved or a hollow sham and yet others fear it will be taken away from them. Some fear what success will bring and back away from it just as they are about to achieve it. Many people unconsciously (and sometimes even consciously) fear the effect that their success has on others and fear the rivalry it produces. Rather than provoke such rivalry (which may remind them of childhood rivalry) they fight shy of success even when it stares them in the face.
• Mental or physical fatigue is a little-discussed cause of depression but most of us can easily slide into true depression if either or both strike. This could be at the heart of much of the depression seen in young women with small children.
The menstrual cycle causes depression regularly in a proportion of women. About half of all women have at least some premenstrual symptoms, and depression can be a real problem for a few. Admission to mental hospitals, suicide attempts, child battering, and depressive episodes are all more common pre-menstrually than at any other time of the month in the female population generally. Clearly there is a hormonal effect but recent thinking suggests that dietary imbalances too play a vital role.
• Retirement, divorce, separation and loneliness are powerful sources of depression in our culture today. Divorce and separation are especially likely to make people depressed, particularly if children are involved. Admission to mental hospital and all kinds of physical illness (including cancers) are much more common in the divorced and separated than in the married. Marital problems themselves are potent and common causes of depression. One large study compared various different forms of therapy for depression and found that of all those tested (including drugs) marital therapy was the most successful.
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- Tags: General health
- Category: General health