Depression - Page 11 of 43

An Easy Way to Reduce Depression And Loneliness

Reducing loneliness and depression could be as simple as this…

Limiting social media to 30 minutes per day decreases feelings of loneliness and depression, research finds.

The study strongly suggests that excessive social media use makes people more depressed and lonely.

It is also ironic that less ‘social’ media use reduces feelings of loneliness.

For the study, 143 college students were tracked for three weeks.

Half were told to use social media as normal, while the other half were instructed to limit it to 30 minutes per day.

All reported their use of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram along with feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness and fear of missing out.

Dr Melissa G. Hunt, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Here’s the bottom line.
Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness.
These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study.”

Dr Hunt does not think young people should stop using social media all together.

Limiting screen time, though, seems sensible, she says:

“It is a little ironic that reducing your use of social media actually makes you feel less lonely.
Some of the existing literature on social media suggests there’s an enormous amount of social comparison that happens.
When you look at other people’s lives, particularly on Instagram, it’s easy to conclude that everyone else’s life is cooler or better than yours.”

Dr Hunt concluded:

“When you’re not busy getting sucked into clickbait social media, you’re actually spending more time on things that are more likely to make you feel better about your life.
In general, I would say, put your phone down and be with the people in your life.”

The study was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (Hunt et al., 2018).

Why Depression Makes Everyday Decisions Difficult (M)

The research may help explain why people who are depressed say they find it difficult to make ordinary, everyday decisions.

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Depressed And Anxious People Are Raised By Parents Who Do This

Higher risk of depression and anxiety from this parental behaviour.

People with critical parents pay less attention to the emotions on other people’s faces, researchers have found.

Looking at and reading emotional expression in other people’s faces helps us build rewarding relationships.

Avoiding these expressions could help to explain how critical parenting can lead to depression and anxiety in later life, since relationships are so critical to well-being.

Ms Kiera James, the study’s first author, said:

“These findings suggest that children with a critical parent might avoid paying attention to faces expressing any type of emotion.
This behavior might affect their relationships with others and could be one reason why children exposed to high levels of criticism are at risk for things like depression and anxiety.”

The results come from a study in which parents talked to their 7 to 11-year-old children for five minutes.

The researchers looked to see how much criticism there was in this segment.

Subsequently, children subject to more criticism avoided looking at pictures of faces showing any type of emotional expression.

Ms James said:

“We know from previous research that people have a tendency to avoid things that make them uncomfortable, anxious, or sad because such feelings are aversive.
We also know that children with a critical parent are more likely to use avoidant coping strategies when they are in distress than children without a critical parent.
Given this research, and our findings that children with a critical parent pay less attention to all emotional facial expressions than children without a critical parent, one possible explanation is that the children with a critical parent avoid looking at any facial expressions of emotion.
This may help them avoid exposure to critical expressions, and, by extension, the aversive feelings they might associate with parental criticism.
That said, it may also prevent them from seeing positive expressions from others.”

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology (James et al., 2018).

This Positive Therapy For Depression May Beat CBT (M)

CBT reduces how much people feel negative emotions, but does less to increase their positive emotions.

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‘Depression’ & ‘Anxiety’ Have Changed Their Meaning Over 50 Years (M)

Rather than depression and anxiety being normalised over the last half century, they have been pathologised.

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The Type Of Exercise That Lifts Depression

People felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.

Lifting weights and strength training help to reduce depression, a review of the research finds.

Strength training can substantially improve people’s symptoms even for those with moderate depression and those who do not train that often.

In fact, strength training, including weight-lifting, is particularly effective for people who have more severe depression symptoms, the study concluded.

It also didn’t matter if people ‘bulked up’ or not — there was no link between having more muscle and feeling better.

The main thing was just to do the workout.

After strength training or weight-lifting, people felt more interested in all activities, in a better mood and it reduced feelings of worthlessness.

The studies cannot tell us why strength training is beneficial, but it may be because it increases blood flow to the brain.

Previous studies have also shown that weight-lifting reduces anxiety symptoms.

Mr Brett Gordon, the study’s first author, said:

“Interestingly, larger improvements were found among adults with depressive symptoms indicative of mild-to-moderate depression compared to adults without such scores, suggesting RET may be particularly effective for those with greater depressive symptoms.”

The conclusions come from a review of 33 separate studies involving 1,877 people.

The studies included both the depressed and nondepressed.

The results showed it didn’t matter if people went to the gym five times a week or just twice a week, or how many repetitions they completed — the benefits were roughly the same.

All that really mattered was showing up and completing the workout.

The study’s authors conclude:

“Resistance exercise training significantly reduced depressive symptoms among adults regardless of health status, total prescribed volume of RET, or significant improvements in strength.”

Weight training has similar benefits to mental health to those provided by aerobic exercise, like jogging.

This is quite apart from its physiological benefits, such as increasing bone strength and preventing other chronic conditions.

The authors recommend working out at least twice a week and performing around 10 repetitions of 10 different strength-building exercises.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Gordon et al., 2018).

An Unusual Sensory Sign Of Depression (M)

As people interact less with others and eat less, these areas of the brain may atrophy through lack of use.

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This Depression Type Responds Poorly To Antidepressants — Affects 25% (M)

Depression treatment can be a hit-and-miss affair because the condition is such a wide-ranging and complex state.

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This Contraceptive Pill Doubles Depression Risk (M)

This is one of the largest ever studies looking at the connection between depression and taking the combined contraceptive pill.

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The Diet Linked To Lower Depression Risk

Those that made the change were less depressed and anxious as well as feeling less fatigue.

Vegetarian and vegan diets are linked to a reduced risk of depression and anxiety, multiple studies have found.

Plus, there is no need to be strict: altering food intake towards a more plant-based diet may still provide a boost to mental health.

One study carried out in the US involved half of 292 people being given weekly instruction in following a vegan diet.

Over the 18 weeks of the study, all had access to healthy vegan options at work for their lunch.

These included black bean chilli, leafy green salads and vegetable hummus sandwiches.

After four months, those that made a shift towards being more vegan were less depressed and anxious as well as feeling less fatigue.

They also felt their overall health was better.

Dr Neal Barnard, study co-author, said:

“The same foods that curb the risk for obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, may help boost overall mood.
In the evolving landscape of neurological research, a plant-based diet may help in treating symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

Vegetarian diets may also provide a similar boost to mental health as vegan diets.

Another study of 15,093 people in Spain found that a pro-vegetarian eating pattern was linked to lower levels of depression.

One nice thing to emerge from this study was that becoming moderately vegetarian was as good as being a strict vegetarian for depression.

Again, people did not have to become completely vegetarian to see the benefit, just lean in that direction.

Health benefits of plants

The health benefits of plant-based diets are also well-known, reducing the risk of heart disease, cancer and other illnesses.

According to one review of 86 separate studies:

“This comprehensive meta-analysis reports a significant protective effect of a vegetarian diet versus the incidence and/or mortality from ischemic heart disease (-25%) and incidence from total cancer (-8%). Vegan diet conferred a significant reduced risk (-15%) of incidence from total cancer.”

Note that some studies, like this one, have linked vegetarianism to increased depression, although these are in the minority.

The studies were published in the journals American Journal of Health Promotion, BMC Medicine, Critical Reviews in Food Science And Nutrition (Agarwal et al., 2015; Sánchez-Villegas et al., 2015; Dinu et al., 2017).