What is Depression?

• Depression is a mood disorder that can occur at any time throughout life. While it may be triggered by environmental stressors, we now know that depression has certain physiological components, especially in the brain.
• Infants and very young children may experience depression, but major depression, that is, a depression that interferes with normal functioning, generally makes its first appearance around the time of puberty and is often mistaken for the normal ups and downs of adolescence.
• Serious depression can be deadly for children and adolescents. More than 5000 young people between the ages of 10 and 25 die by suicide yearly.
• Depression related suicide is the leading medical cause of death for youth between the ages of 14 and 25.
• Untreated depression in young people can have long range consequences, impairing educational and social development. Young people with depression and related disorders are at higher risk for substance abuse and ending up in the criminal justice system.
• Effective treatments for childhood depression are available through mental health professionals or community services for children.

Research

Depression is often categorized in two ways: genetic and situational.

Genetic depression means that certain families seem to carry genes that predispose their members to depression or depression related disorders in the same way that heart disease or hypertension can appear more frequently in certain families. The Earnest Hemingway family, for example, is riddled with outstanding individuals who battled with depression, and in some cases died suicide.

Situational depression can occur as the result of certain stressors such as a death in the family, war and other violent traumas, poverty, abuse, long illnesses, etc. The depression may gradually disappear with the removal of the stressor, or may require professional intervention. When Tipper Gore's son Albert was nearly killed in a car accident, she developed a serious depression that required medical intervention.

Current research on the brain seems to indicate that, regardless of the source of the depression (genetic or situational), a certain biological breakdown occurs in normal brain functioning. Much of this research has focused on neurological synapses in the brain. In normal brain functioning electrical impulses traveling along the neuronal branches must be transmitted across a synapse (a tiny space between the neurons). This transmission occurs with the help of receptors at the point of synapse and the presence of certain chemicals called neurotransmitters. A depletion or oversupply of these chemicals, especially dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin seems to play a role in the appearance of the symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression, manic depression, and schizophrenia.

Pharmaceutical companies have been working to develop medications that specifically target these areas of the brain to restore balance to the delicate brain chemistry that allows our brains to function.

As we learn more about the role our social and emotional environment play in the ability of our body to function and our minds to think, researchers are also studying techniques to help us reduce stress and find healthy coping mechanisms to deal with the stress we cannot reduce.