Category: Depression

Link between the gut and low mood found in study of mice.

Bacteria in the intestine can play an important role in causing anxiety and depression, new research concludes.

It helps explain recent research suggesting probiotics can stop sad moods getting worse.

Probiotics may work to help stabilise the bacteria in the gut.

Another recent study also found probiotics may reduce anxiety.

The new conclusions come from a study of mice which were exposed to stress early in life.

Dr Premysl Bercik, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We have shown for the first time in an established mouse model of anxiety and depression that bacteria play a crucial role in inducing this abnormal behaviour.

But it’s not only bacteria, it’s the altered bi-directional communication between the stressed host — mice subjected to early life stress — and its microbiota, that leads to anxiety and depression.”

In other words, anxiety and depression result from stress early in life plus microbial factors.

Early life stress on its own was not enough to cause the mice to behave anxiously, the study found.

Similarly, the bacteria in the gut on their own do not seem to cause depression and anxiety.

Dr Bercik explained how they reached this conclusion:

“….if we transfer the bacteria from stressed mice into non stressed germ-free mice, no abnormalities are observed.

This suggests that in this model, both host and microbial factors are required for the development of anxiety and depression-like behavior.

Neonatal stress leads to increased stress reactivity and gut dysfunction that changes the gut microbiota which, in turn, alters brain function.”

Naturally, as the study was carried out on mice, it will have to confirmed in humans.

Dr Bercik said:

“We are starting to explain the complex mechanisms of interaction and dynamics between the gut microbiota and its host.

Our data show that relatively minor changes in microbiota profiles or its metabolic activity induced by neonatal stress can have profound effects on host behaviour in adulthood.

It would be important to determine whether this also applies to humans.

For instance, whether we can detect abnormal microbiota profiles or different microbial metabolic activity in patients with primary psychiatric disorders, like anxiety and depression,”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (De Palma et al., 2015).

• Read on: Consuming a prebiotic bacteria can have an anti-anxiety effect

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Current antidepressants take around 3 to 8 weeks to kick in and only help around 50% of people who are depressed.

A new type of antidepressant holds the promise of treating depression quickly, without too many side-effects.

Professor Scott Thompson, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine who led the research, said:

“Our results open up a whole new class of potential antidepressant medications.

We have evidence that these compounds can relieve the devastating symptoms of depression in less than one day, and can do so in a way that limits some of the key disadvantages of current approaches.”

Currently used antidepressants, such as Prozac and Lexapro, target levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin.

Unfortunately they are only effective in around half of people with depression.

Even amongst people they do help, it can take three to eight weeks for the effects can be felt.

For patients who are suicidal, this period can be excruciating.

Also, many now believe that targeting serotonin is not effective (see: Long-Held Belief About Depression Challenged by New Study).

The new compounds focus on another neurotransmitter with the acronym GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), instead of serotonin.

GABA mainly reduces brain activity in certain key areas related to mood.

The new class of compounds dampen down these inhibitory signals.

Theoretically, the result should be to lift mood.

Professor Thompson explained that preliminary tests on animals have been encouraging:

“These compounds produced the most dramatic effects in animal studies that we could have hoped for.

It will now be tremendously exciting to find out whether they produce similar effects in depressed patients.

If these compounds can quickly provide relief of the symptoms of human depression, such as suicidal thinking, it could revolutionize the way patients are treated.”

The study found that the compounds only affected the brains of stressed rats and left unstressed rats unchanged.

This may mean that the side-effects of the treatment will be less severe than those seen for current antidepressants.

The study was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology (Fischell et al., 2015).

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The way to react to stressful situations that protects your health.

Dealing with the minor stresses and strains of everyday life in a positive way is key to long-term health, a new study finds.

The research found that people who remained calm or cheerful in the face of irritations had a lower risk of inflammation.

Chronic inflammation can lead to health problems like cancer, heart disease and obesity.

The study provides further evidence of how people’s emotional response to everyday stressors impacts their health.

Dr Nancy Sin, the study’s first author, said:

“A person’s frequency of stress may be less related to inflammation than responses to stress.

It is how a person reacts to stress that is important.

Positive emotions, and how they can help people in the event of stress, have really been overlooked.”

The types of stressors the researchers studied included arguments at home and work.

Women were particularly susceptible to elevated inflammation if they didn’t deal well with stress.

Another of the study’s authors, Dr Jennifer E. Graham-Engeland, explained:

“We examined both positive and negative affective reactions to stress and compared the effects of stress exposure with responses to stressors.

Little is known about the potential role of daily stress processes on inflammation.

Much of the relevant past research with humans has focused on either chronic stress or acute laboratory-based stress — methods that do not fully capture how people respond to naturalistic stressors in the context of daily life.”

The study was published in the journal Health Psychology (Sin et al., 2015).

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New approach to cause of depression may help treatment using established therapies.

It’s often assumed that it’s depression that causes a pessimistic view of the future.

But it could be the other way around, a new study finds.

Being pessimistic about the future may actually cause depression.

Professor Martin Seligman and Ann Marie Roepke reviewed the research on prospection.

Prospection refers to how we think about the future.

Their conclusions are published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology (Roepke & Seligman, 2015).

They find that there are three ways in which thinking about the future may cause depression:

• Poor generation of possible futures.
• Poor evaluation of possible future.
• Negative beliefs about the future.

Depression also likely feeds back into more negative views of the future, creating a vicious circle.

Fortunately, these types of thinking can be addressed by talk therapies such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT).

The study’s authors write:

“Prospection belongs front and centre in the study of depression.

Laboratory studies are needed to confirm that faulty prospection does drive depression and to help us determine how prospection can be improved.

We hope clinical scientists will invest in research on prospection to shed more light on a crucial and underappreciated process that may underlie much more than depression.

An understanding of how prospection shapes psychopathology may enable researchers to create more effective treatments and help distressed individuals to create brighter futures.”

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Why many find it so hard to support people who are depressed.

Some people, when they feel depressed prefer ‘negative validation’, a new study finds.

Negative validation is letting people know that the feelings they have are normal and reasonable in the situation.

Those who have low self-esteem prefer this type of comforting, as opposed to someone trying to cheer them up.

Professor Denise Marigold, who led the study, said:

“People with low self-esteem want their loved ones to see them as they see themselves.

As such, they are often resistant to their friends’ reminders of how positively they see them and reject what we call positive reframing-expressions of optimism and encouragement for bettering their situation.”

It’s a natural reaction to try and help ‘reframe’ the situation for someone who is feeling depressed.

We want to remind them about all the positive aspects of their lives and their situation.

However, as Professor Denise Marigold says:

“If your attempt to point out the silver lining is met with a sullen reminder of the prevailing dark cloud, you might do best to just acknowledge the dark cloud and sympathize.”

This is probably why some people find it hard to support those who are depressed.

They feel their natural way of dealing with depression — trying to cheer someone up — just doesn’t help.

For the study, the researchers used hypothetical scenarios, lab interactions and real-life instances of received support.

They discovered that some people found it particularly difficult to help others with low-self esteem.

Not only did their attempts to cheer the other person up not work, but they themselves felt worse about themselves and the relationship.

It is better to match support to the type of person.

People with high self-esteem don’t mind being ‘cheered up’, but those with low-self esteem prefer a more empathic approach.

The study is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Marigold et al., 2014).

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How four weeks of probiotic supplementation can help stop a sad mood getting worse.

Probiotics may stop sadness turning into depression by helping people let go of the past, a new study finds.

Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition found that probiotics stopped people ruminating so much.

Rumination is when people focus on bad experiences and feelings from the past.

Dr Laura Steenbergen, the study’s first author, said:

“Rumination is one of the most predictive vulnerability markers of depression.

Persistent ruminative thoughts often precede and predict episodes of depression.”

In the study 40 people were given a sachet to take with water or milk every day for four weeks.

Half of the people received sachets that contained a multispecies probiotic.

The other half received a placebo for the four weeks.

Before and afterwards people’s so-called ‘cognitive reactivity’ was measured.

‘Cognitive reactivity’ is the extent to which a sad mood can turn into something more serious.

The authors explained the results:

“…in the probiotics supplementation condition participants perceived themselves to be less distracted by aggressive and ruminative thoughts when in a sad mood.”

In other words, when people felt sad, those taking the probiotics ruminated less.

The authors write:

“…studies have shown that the tendency to engage in ruminative thoughts is sufficient to turn mood fluctuations into depressive episodes, and that individuals who typically respond to low mood by ruminating about possible causes and consequences of their state have more difficulties in recovering from depression.”

Probiotics have been increasingly linked to good mental health.

But this is the first study to identify this specific link.

Dr Lorenza Colzato, another of the study’s authors, said:

“Even if preliminary, these results provide the first evidence that the intake of probiotics may help reduce negative thoughts associated with sad mood.

As such, our findings shed an interesting new light on the potential of probiotics to serve as adjuvant or preventive therapy for depression.”

The research is published in the journal  Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (Steenbergen et al., 2015).

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Facebook use linked to depression by new research, but particular psychological process could be the cause.

Comparing yourself to other people on Facebook has been linked to depressive symptoms, a new study finds.

While the social network can be a useful way of connecting with others, there may be psychological dangers.

Mai-Ly Steers, the study’s first author, said:

“One danger is that Facebook often gives us information about our friends that we are not normally privy to, which gives us even more opportunities to socially compare.

You can’t really control the impulse to compare because you never know what your friends are going to post.

In addition, most of our Facebook friends tend to post about the good things that occur in their lives, while leaving out the bad.

If we’re comparing ourselves to our friends’ ‘highlight reels,’ this may lead us to think their lives are better than they actually are and conversely, make us feel worse about our own lives.”

Surveys of over 300 people found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the greater their depressive symptoms.

However, people who spent more time comparing themselves with others were more depressed.

For people who used Facebook a lot but spent less time comparing themselves with others, the link to depression was not as strong.

Ms Steers said:

“It doesn’t mean Facebook causes depression, but that depressed feelings and lots of time on Facebook and comparing oneself to others tend to go hand in hand.”

Fascinatingly, it didn’t matter how people were comparing themselves.

For example, it may be depressing to compare yourself to someone who has just posted beautiful pictures of their vacation.

But the research also found the link to depression when people made comparisons with others doing worse than themselves.

Ms Steers said:

“This research and previous research indicates the act of socially comparing oneself to others is related to long-term destructive emotions.

Any benefit gained from making social comparisons is temporary and engaging in frequent social comparison of any kind may be linked to lower well-being.”

People experiencing ’emotional difficulties’ may be particularly susceptible to these comparisons, Ms Steers thinks.

During periods of emotional turmoil, other people’s lives can make them feel particularly lonely and isolated.

The study was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (Steers et al., 2015).

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