When depression is treated, you can reverse the damage. With successful treatment, brain scans will likely show you an average, healthy brain.
And, since depression is often a long-term disease, people needs long-term treatments for it. “There are clear differences between a healthy brain and a depressed brain,” Dr. Katz says. “And the exciting thing is, when you treat that depression effectively, the brain goes back to looking like a healthy brain.”
Each person's recovery is different. Some recover in a few weeks or months. But for others, depression is a long-term illness. In about 20% to 30% of people who have an episode of depression, the symptoms don't entirely go away.
Research published in CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics found that strength training, aerobic activity, and mind-body exercise, such as yoga, can reduce depressive symptoms and induce neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to repair itself.
There's growing evidence that several parts of the brain shrink in people with depression. Specifically, these areas lose gray matter volume (GMV). That's tissue with a lot of brain cells. GMV loss seems to be higher in people who have regular or ongoing depression with serious symptoms.
People who are depressed cannot simply “pull themselves together” and be cured. Without proper treatment, including antidepressants and/or psychotherapy, untreated clinical depression can last for weeks, months, or years. Appropriate treatment, however, can help most people with depression.
Rewiring your brain with the help of hypnotherapy
Rewiring your brain is something you do unintentionally every day. When you add positive intent to your actions, you empower yourself to rewire your brain in a way that can reduce your symptoms of depression.
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.
There is no cure for depression, but many different treatments are available to manage the symptoms. The symptoms of depression vary among individuals. A treatment plan that includes medical interventions, support, and lifestyle changes can enable a person to live a normal and full life with the condition.
The Impact of Major Depression on Overall Health
This difference in overall health, on average, translates to a reduction in future healthy life expectancy of 9.5 years for women and 9.7 years for men.
In general, nearly everyone with depression has ongoing feelings of sadness, and may feel helpless, hopeless, and irritable. Without treatment, symptoms can last for many years. This condition is most often treated with medicine, therapy, or a combination of both.
Persistent depressive disorder is a type of depression. It's less severe than major depressive disorder — another type — but it's ongoing. It's defined as lasting at least two years in adults and at least one year in children and teens.
Some depressed people experience difficulty focusing, learning, remembering, understanding, and more. It can be distressing to notice your mental abilities declining. The good news is these cognitive symptoms tend to improve with treatment. The bad news is they usually don't disappear.
People with clinical depression often have increased levels of monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), an enzyme that breaks down key neurotransmitters, resulting in very low levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), mental illness refers to “conditions that affect a person's thinking, feeling, mood, or behavior.” These can include but aren't limited to depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia.
To some extent, brain imaging can identify different types of depression according to the part of the brain affected. With the information compiled by numerous brain scans, researchers can find common themes in brain structure, brain function and mental health symptoms among people with depression.
Depression doesn't just get in the way of being happy. It can also interrupt your ability to think. It hampers your attention, memory and decision-making abilities. You may find that your executive functions are limited, so you begin having trouble seeing your way through issues.
Scientists now know that the brain has an amazing ability to change and heal itself in response to mental experience. This phenomenon, known as neuroplasticity, is considered to be one of the most important developments in modern science for our understanding of the brain.
It can impair your attention and memory, as well as your information processing and decision-making skills. It can also lower your cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt your goals and strategies to changing situations) and executive functioning (the ability to take all the steps to get something done).
Experts suggest 90 days as a general estimate for rewiring the brain, but everyone is different. Talk to us today and find out how your brain and body can recover with the support of our experienced healthcare team.
Medications and psychotherapy are effective for most people with depression. Your primary care doctor or psychiatrist can prescribe medications to relieve symptoms. However, many people with depression also benefit from seeing a psychiatrist, psychologist or other mental health professional.
Although psychotic depression itself cannot evolve into schizophrenia, when severe depression is untreated or undertreated, it's possible for the resulting distress and side effects to trigger an underlying psychotic disorder, such as schizoaffective disorder.
Psychological counseling (psychotherapy) by a psychiatrist, psychologist or other mental health professional can be very effective. For many people, psychotherapy combined with medication works best. It can help identify underlying concerns that may be adding to your depression.