Clinical depression is a chronic condition, but it usually occurs in episodes, which can last several weeks or months. You'll likely have more than one episode in your lifetime. This is different from persistent depressive disorder, which is mild or moderate depression that lasts for at least two years.
People who take their medications regularly and make some lifestyle changes can live long and healthy lives. These medications and lifestyle changes are treatments for diabetes. Depression is the same way. There's no cure for depression, but there are lots of effective treatments.
Persistent depressive disorder (PDD) is mild or moderate depression that doesn't go away. A person with PDD has a sad, dark, or low mood and two or more other symptoms of depression. The symptoms last most of the day, on most days, over a long period of time.
Sometimes, depression symptoms will last for only a few weeks. For many people though, untreated depression could last months and even years. Regardless of how long you've experienced depression, the condition is treatable. In fact, seeking the support of a professional often helps symptoms resolve much sooner.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, between 80% and 90% of people with depression will eventually respond well to treatment. In some rare cases, though, depression doesn't improve with traditional treatment options like psychotherapy and medications.
So how long do depressive episodes last? Usually, the depressive episode length ranges from six months to eight months, depending on the person. While some people may have depression that fades, others may struggle with depression on and off their whole life.
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.
Depression is about 50% more common among women than among men. Worldwide, more than 10% of pregnant women and women who have just given birth experience depression (2). More than 700 000 people die due to suicide every year.
This, says Bill Deakin, has pointed them to several relevant features of brain function. They include cognitive flexibility - our capacity to adapt our thinking to different situations - and also the extent to which our brains concentrate on processing and remembering happy, as opposed to sad, information.
Staying mentally strong can seem like an overwhelming task when you suffer from a physically and emotionally draining disease like depression, but the fact is that people who suffer from this disorder (and others like it) are some of the most mentally strong individuals there are.
Research by the National Institutes of Health shows that you lose gray matter volume (GMV) when you suffer from depression. This loss is caused by parts of your brain shrinking due to the hormone cortisol impeding the growth of your brain cells. The more serious depression a person suffers, the more GMV they lose.
It's important to seek support as early as possible, as the sooner a person gets treatment, the sooner they can recover. Untreated depression can have many negative effects on a person's life, including serious relationship and family problems, difficulty finding and holding down a job, and drug and alcohol problems.
“This means that the brain structure of patients with serious clinical depression is not as fixed as we thought, and we can improve brain structure within a short time frame, around 6 weeks,” said Eric Ruhe, from Rabdoud Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands .
Brain Inflammation
But people who have a major depressive episode have higher levels of translocator proteins. Those are chemicals linked to brain inflammation. Studies show these proteins are even higher in people who've had untreated major depressive disorder for 10 years or longer.
In the simplest answer, the long-term effects of antidepressants on brain chemistry aren't understood very well. Some research has suggested this type of drug aids in neuroplasticity. In other words, these drugs can affect how our minds organize and form synaptic connections.
During a depressive episode, people often have reduced cognitive abilities, which is a key feature of the depressive phenomenon, as well as a diagnostic item, Andreassen explains. Depression can impair attention and memory, as well as decision-making skills.
Studies have also found that higher IQ is associated with more mental illness, including depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.
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.
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.
Things like stress, drinking alcohol, using drugs, and hormone changes can affect mood and the brain's chemistry. Some health conditions may also increase the likelihood of anger, irritability, or sadness. For example, low levels of thyroid hormones can cause a depressed mood in some people.