I'm a student - I need some help...

Northstarmom
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:02:30 +0000

Research has indicated that often the best treatment for depression is therapy plus medication. That is the combination that worked for me and for many of my friends who have suffered from depression. This includes friends whose depression was due to grief over the illness and death of a loved one.

Depression itself appears to cause physical problems as well as problems with memory and other mental functioning.

Says the chair of Emory U’s psychiatry dept.: " There is absolutely no doubt that depression results in a major increased risk for the development of cardiovascular disease and stroke.

That is depressed patients are more likely to have a heart attack, to suffer from congestive heart failure and to have a variety of other cardiac abnormalities than individuals without depression…"

[Can Depression Cause Any Long-Term Medical Problems (Such As Heart Disease)? - ABC News](Can Depression Cause Any Long-Term Medical Problems (Such As Heart Disease)? - ABC News)

"Memory is but one of a suite of higher or “executive” brain functions hobbled by depression. In addition to becoming forgetful, a person suffering from major depression may have trouble initiating tasks, making decisions, planning future actions, or organizing thoughts. This is thought to trace to imbalances in the chemicals, called neurotransmitters, that enable individual brain cells to “talk” to each other and store new memories.

One of the ways that depression affects memory is by skewing the types of memories people tend to recall while in the grip of melancholy. We all tend to remember happy events when we are happy and sad events when we are sad, explains Norman Rosenthal, MD, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School. A depressed person tends to recall mostly the negative, unhappy experiences. This can appear to family and friends as a loss of memory. It also reinforces the person’s drab and negative view of life, fueling the depression…"
[Depression and Memory](http://www.memorylossonline.com/summer2001/depression.html)

“e money spent on drugs and therapy has increased as a percentage of total income on the average person, yet depression and mental illness problems continue to soar. I wonder why that is?”

It could be that depression is being recognized and treated far more than it was in the past.