Category: Depression

The curious effect of depression on time perception.

Most people experience differences in how time is perceived, with or without depression.

For example, 10 minutes in the dentist’s waiting-room can seem like an hour.

While an enjoyable conversation with a good friend can pass in the blink of an eye.

What a new study finds, though, is that depressed people have a general feeling that time is passing more slowly, or even that it has stopped.

Dr. Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Psychiatrists and psychologists in hospitals and private practices repeatedly report that depressed patients feel that time only creeps forward slowly or is passing in slow motion.

The results of our analysis confirm that this is indeed the case.”

The strange part is what happens when people with depression are asked to judge intervals of time.

For example, they are asked to watch a movie and estimate its length.

Or they are asked to press a button after five seconds has passed.

When tests compare people with and without depression, there is no difference.

Depressed people are just as accurate at judging intervals of time.

Dr. Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel said:

“We found strong indicators that in depressed individuals the subjective feeling of the passage of time differs from the ability to assess the actual duration of external events.”

Scientists are still not sure exactly why people with depression have the feeling that times is dragging, although it seems intuitive enough.

It may be, though, due to the way depressed people focus on time passing.

People without depression, when engaged in activities, may find time passes more quickly because they are absorbed in the task.

People with depression, though, may concentrate more on the passage of time, making it feel longer.

The research — a ‘meta-analysis’ of other studies — is published in the Journal of Affective Disorders (Thönes & Oberfeld-Twistel, 2015).

Clock image from Shutterstock

Brain scans may help people get the right therapy for depression.

Neuroscientists have shown that brain scans can predict which patients with clinical depression will benefit from talk therapy.

The technique could help avoid months of trial and error in the treatment of clinical depression.

Dr Gabriel S. Dichter, one of the study’s authors, said:

“In the future, we will be able to use non-invasive brain imaging technology to match patients with the treatment option that has the best chance of lifting their depression.

In my mind, that’s as important as developing new treatments.

We already have a lot of excellent treatments but no way to know which one is best for a particular patient.”

Around one in six people will experience a period of major depression in their lives and among these, many will have multiple bouts.

A variety of different treatments are available, but 40% of the time people are not helped by the first one they try.

In the study, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, 23 patients experiencing a major depressive episode had their brains scanned in its resting state (Crowther et al., 2015).

They were then given a form of talk therapy known as behavioural activation.

In comparison to other therapies which delve into childhood experiences (e.g. psychodynamic) or try to alter thought processes (e.g. cognitive-behavioural therapy), behavioural activation focuses on things you can do right now.

These might include planning how to get to work on time or working out how to socialise effectively with loved ones.

Patients set clear, immediate goals, which they can then feel good about achieving.

Not all patients respond well to this type of therapy — people have different preferences — but the researchers were able to identify the brain networks linked to those who did prefer this type of therapy.

The researchers found a better response to the therapy among patients who had stronger connections in areas of the brain relating to assigning positive or negative values to events and in concentration.

Dr Dichter explained:

“There’s a complex interplay between the regions of the brain that are involved in cognitive control and those regions involved in understanding how something is going to feel.

We’ve known for a long time that atypical connections between those regions are involved in depression, but now we know that they can also be involved in how a person responds to talk therapy.”

Dr Dichter concluded:

“It’s a long road to find the right treatment for each patient.

Our goal is to develop a road map, to use this type of information to predict which patients will respond to which treatments.”

Therapy image from Shutterstock

Could there be an underlying biological cause for many mental illnesses?

Diagnoses as different as depression, addictions and schizophrenia are all linked to a similar pattern of gray-matter loss in the brain, a new study finds.

The results hint at an underlying biological cause for these mental illnesses.

Dr Thomas Insel, commenting on the study, said:

“The idea that these disorders share some common brain architecture and that some functions could be abnormal across so many of them is intriguing.”

The research, published in JAMA Psychiatry, pooled data from 193 separate studies, which included brain imaging from 7,381 patients (Goodkind et al., 2015).

Patients were experiencing all sorts of different mental illnesses, including depression, schizophrenia, OCD and some anxiety disorders.

Despite this, the researchers identified three structures in the brain which had shrunk across all the different diagnoses.

The areas of the brain — the left and right anterior insula and the dorsal anterior cingulate — are important parts of a network that is involved in making decisions, paying attention, task-switching and planning.

These connected regions of the brain are like an ‘alarm bell’, the researchers say.

Dr Amit Etkin, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“They work together, signaling to other brain regions when reality deviates from expectations — that something important and unpredicted has happened, or something important has failed to happen.”

While there were similarities between the mental illnesses, there were also differences.

People with major depression, for example, also had gray-matter loss in the hippocampus and the amygdala, areas which play key roles in memory and the emotions respectively.

Commenting, though, on the similarities seen across the different mental illnesses, Dr Insel said:

“I wouldn’t have expected these results.

I’ve been working under the assumption that we can use neuroimaging to help classify the different forms of mental illness.

This makes it harder.”

CT scans image from Shutterstock

The surprisingly small amount of therapy which can prevent teen mental health issues.

Just three hours of group therapy delivered by teachers is enough to reduce the incidence of many mental health problems amongst teens by more than a quarter.

In the study of 509 British youths, students were given two 90-minute sessions of therapy by specially trained teachers and the students were followed up over two years.

Dr. Patricia Conrod, who led the study, said:

“Almost one-in-four American 8- to 15-year-olds has experienced a mental health disorder over the past year.

We know that these disorders are associated with a plethora of negative consequences.

Our study shows that teacher delivered interventions that target specific risk factors for mental health problems can be immensely effective at reducing the incidence of depression, anxiety and conduct disorders in the long term.”

Nineteen schools in London were involved in the research, which identified youths who were particularly at risk.

The specially trained teachers taught students how to deal with the aspects of their personalities that might cause them problems.

For example, being highly impulsive — the tendency to act without thinking — has a strong link to conduct issues.

Organised into groups, students thought about different scenarios in which they might be tempted to act impulsively, say, by drinking or doing drugs, and how they should cope with these situations cognitively.

The results of this group were compared to a similar control group given no intervention.

Researchers found that that short therapy sessions had been remarkably effective.

There was a:

• 21-26% reduction in severe depression,
• 35% reduction in conduct problems amongst impulsive teens,
• 33% reduction in severe anxiety problems.

Dr. Patricia Conrod said:

“The interventions were run by trained educational professionals, suggesting that this brief intervention can be both effective and sustainable when run within the school system.

We are now leading similar study is 32 high schools in Montreal to further test the efficacy of this kind of programme.”

Image credit: Ardinnnn

The jobs with the highest and lowest rates of depression.

People who work in public transit, such as bus drivers, top the list for rates of depression, with those working in real estate and social work not far behind, a new study finds.

The least depressed professions are recreation services — like those working in the theatre and at fitness centres — and highway construction, the survey also found.

The study’s authors explain:

“Industries with the highest rates, tended to be those which, on the national level, require frequent or difficult interactions with the public or clients, and have high levels of stress and low levels of physical activity.”

The insights come from insurance claims submitted by almost a quarter of a million individuals working in western Pennsylvania.

Here is the full list of the jobs with the highest levels of depression along with the percentage of people suffering from depression or a condition which involves depression, like bipolar disorder:

1. Local/Intercity Passenger Transit — 16.19%
2. Real Estate — 15.65%
3. Social Services — 14.60%
4. Miscellaneous Manufacturing Industries — 14.25%
5. Personal Services — 14.25%
6. Legal Services — 13.44%
7. Environmental Quality/Housing — 13.42%
8. Membership Organizations — 13.28%
9. Security and Commodity Brokers — 12.60%
10. Printing and Publishing — 12.43%

The study’s results are published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epistemology (Wulsin et al., 2014).

Another link between the jobs with the highest rates of depression was that they mostly involve very low levels of physical activity.

In contrast, the jobs with the lowest rates of depression mostly involved significant physical activity, with their average depression rates all hovering around 7%:

1. Recreation services
2. Highway construction
3. Coal mining
4. Metallurgy
5. Air travel

In the middle of the table were the jobs that had average levels of depression (around 10%):

• Trucking
• Human resources
• Restaurant
• Education
• Engineering
• Health care
• Auto repair

Image credit: Sander van der Wel

Study finds support for severe depression treatment that’s so obvious it incredible it hasn’t been tried before.

Laughing gas, or nitrous oxide, improves the symptoms of severe depression, according to a new pilot study.

The research, conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is believed to be the first ever to give laughing gas to people with depression.

Of the 20 patients with treatment-resistant depression in the study, two-thirds were significantly improved after inhaling nitrous oxide, while only one-third improved after breathing a placebo gas.

Dr.  Charles R. Conway, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“When they received nitrous oxide, many of the patients reported a rapid and significant improvement.

Although some patients also reported feeling better after breathing the placebo gas, it was clear that the overall pattern observed was that nitrous oxide improved depression above and beyond the placebo.

Most patients who improved reported that they felt better only two hours after treatment with nitrous oxide.

That compares with at least two weeks for typical oral antidepressants to exert their beneficial, antidepressant effects.”

While the study, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, only tested people on the day they were given the nitrous oxide and the next day; anecdotally, patients reported feeling better up to a week later (Nagele et al., 2014).

Patients were given a mixture of half nitrous oxide and half oxygen — the same ratio used by dentists.

The advantages of the drug are that it acts quickly, has few side-effects and leaves the body quickly.

In comparison, antidepressants and talking therapies take much longer to have an effect, although these effects likely last much longer.

Professor Charles F. Zorumski, another of the study’s authors, said:

“If our findings can be replicated, a fast-acting drug like this might be particularly useful in patients with severe depression who may be at risk for suicide and who need help right away.

Or perhaps the drug could be used to relieve symptoms temporarily until more conventional treatments begin to work.”

Dr. Peter Nagele, who led the study, said:

“It’s kind of surprising that no one ever thought about using a drug that makes people laugh as a treatment for patients whose main symptom is that they’re so very sad.”

Image credit: Valeria P.

The vitamin which helps those with seasonally affected disorder (SAD) and is linked to good mental health.

Maintaining sufficient levels of vitamin D in the body is not just good for physical health, it can also help protect against depression and promote good mental health, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at over 100 leading articles for a connection between depression, seasonally affected disorder and vitamin D levels (Stewart et al., 2014).

Dr. Alan E. Stewart, who led the study, which is published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, said:

“Seasonal affective disorder is believed to affect up to 10 percent of the population, depending upon geographical location, and is a type of depression related to changes in season.

People with SAD have the same symptoms every year, starting in fall and continuing through the winter months.

We believe there are several reasons for this, including that vitamin D levels fluctuate in the body seasonally, in direct relation to seasonally available sunlight.

For example, studies show there is a lag of about eight weeks between the peak in intensity of ultraviolet radiation and the onset of SAD, and this correlates with the time it takes for UV radiation to be processed by the body into vitamin D.”

Research has also repeatedly shown a link between low levels of vitamin D and depression.

Professor Michael Kimlin, another of the study’s authors, says that maintaining vitamin D levels is relatively easy:

“What we know now is that there are strong indications that maintaining adequate levels of vitamin D are also important for good mental health.

A few minutes of sunlight exposure each day should be enough for most people to maintain an adequate vitamin D status.”

Image credit: Alyssa L. Miller