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Case study of depressive disorders
Major depressive disorder introduction sample paper
Case study of depressive disorders
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Depression disorder is characterized by several impairments in different functions. This paper is aimed to provide an overview of the impairments of depression.
Emotion Expression in Face
In one article (Surgladze et al, 2004), it analyzed the recognition accuracy and response styles of facial expressions in patients with depression, and the results suggest that depressed individuals’ facial expressions of discrimination happy and sad feelings are less accurate than healthy participants. Specifically, patients suffering from depression show deficits in emotion-specific response and it causes lower tendencies in labeling happy facial expressions as happy. The tendency of a depressed individual mislabeling the facial expressions of others may
Major Depressive Disorder, which is also referred to as Clinical Depression, is a disorder caused when low serotonin levels, that suppress pain perception and are often found in the pineal gland at the center of the brain, promote low levels of norepinephrine, a monoamine neurotransmitter that controls cognitive ability. This disabling disorder interferes with a person’s daily life as it prevents one from performing normal functions, such as eating, sleeping, interacting, or enjoying once pleasurable activities. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the common symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder are continued feelings of anxiety, worthlessne...
Depression is a mental illness, which affects millions of Americans each year. Currently there are many prescription drugs, called anti-depressants that have been proven to successfully treat it. The causes of depression are somewhat of a medical enigma, however, it is known that depression is associated with a change in the brains chemistry involving the function of neurotransmitters (Reichert). This chemical change occurs in healthy brain’s, which experience sadness, but ends after the unpleasant stimulus is removed. In people suffering from depression this chemical change does not correspond to any particular stimulus. Symptoms of depression are often incapacitating and include severe and extended sadness, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of emptiness, irritability and anxiety (Reichert, Spake).
Previously, neuro-imaging studies have only observed the amygdala’s response to emotional face stimuli of the same cultural environment. This study went further and tested the amygdala’s response to participants of different cultures. In the study there were 22 adult participants: 12 native Japanese living in Japan (6 men and 6 women) and 10 Caucasians living in the United States (5 men and 5 women). The stimuli used to arouse the amygdala’s reactivity were 80 digitized grayscale pictures of faces that had different expressions. The facial expressions were of the four: neutral, happy, angry, and fearful. The photos were of 20 Japanese and 20 Caucasian men and women taken from the two groups. Participants were tested based on their own self-identified culture. The experimenters who conducted the studies used the participant’s native language. The independent variable in the study was the faces from the different cultures and the dependent variable was the amygdala’...
Depression is considered a mental disorder that can lead an individual to commit suicide, experiment fatal risk that can injure his or her life. Furthermore, an individual feeling depressed lacks motivation to do anything progressive with his or her life. With that said, these individuals sometime gives up interest in activities that were once enjoyable, gets in a phase were he or she loses appetite, begins to overeat, loses concentration on what he or she is trying to complete, and becomes indecisiveness. Moreover, depression is a condition that makes an individual feel miserable, have no motivation to any activity that can influence his or her views, actions, welfare. Furthermore, depressed individuals at times may feel sad, apprehensive, desperate, destitute, useless, awkward, short-tempered, and agitated. In addition, the melancholy of depression is categorized by a greater concentration and length that is attached to severe symptoms. According to Wedding & Corsini (2014) states, “Physical disease, severe and acute stress, and chronic stress area also precipitating factors” (Pp. 240) of an individu...
Allie Brosh is an artist who created “Depression part II” in one of her blogs, “hyperbole and a half.” The drawings are done with such little effort but give an explanation of Allie’s life leading up to her depression. The drawings as a child depict a happier time. Her imagination as a child didn 't have limits, everything was possible and no dream was to far for her to reach. One doesn 't get a warning sign of when you 'll hit an all time low. Brosh’s drawing shows a storyline of how her depression affected her. She describes her depression through drawings of her everyday life, and a heavy use very bold colors to express the darkness or bright side of the situation she’s faced. When Allie Brosh comes
People are constantly misreading your facial expressions and assume, wrongly, that you are the most irritated, depressed, and/or psychotic person on the planet. It's frustrating and insulting to anyone whose neutral face comes off more like a nuclear face, but it can actually be harmful to people on the spectrum.
Although historically depression has been considered a character condition, evidence has accumulated suggesting the role of a biological substrate, namely serotonin, in subgroups of depressed patients. This accumulated evidence supports the indoleamine hypothesis of depression, which suggests that major depression results from a deficiency of available serotonin or inefficient serotonin. (16). We see that depletions of serotonin from certain regions of the brain such as the hypothalamus, amygdala, and cortical areas involved in cognition and other high processes, can have a great impact in contributing to depression.
The not-so-secret weapon in almost every aging Hollywood star’s arsenal is Botox. It has been dubbed the fountain of youth in a syringe. Almost everyone in Hollywood has had a Botox injection here or there, and in the words of Jenna McCarthy, “Anyone who doesn’t [admit it] is full of [bleep].” The celebrity doctors of Los Angeles and New York City estimate that as many as 75% of their famous patients over age 35 have gotten Botox (Triggs & Harrington, 2009). While this youth potion has been erasing crow’s feet and neck wrinkles since 1997, a new study reveals that celebrities may need to credit more than just their ageless complexions to Botox. Botox, get ready for this eyebrow raiser, can alleviate depression.
Depression can be so debilitating that it can cause a person to become suicidal. This depression is termed Unipolar. According to The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM, Unipolar depression is described as a significant depressed period that lasts more than two weeks. During this period an individual exhibits a minimum of five depressive symptoms (Comer, 2005). Symptoms of depression can include the inability to concentrate, loss of appetite, insomnia, and daily bouts with depression. Unipolar depression is presumed to be caused by a combination of factors, as opposed to having one universal cause. According to The Black Dog Institute of Australia, depression is in part, a genetic biochemical imbalance of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine in combination with stress ("Fact sheets," 2009, Causes of depression). The organization’s studies discovered that individuals that exhibit high levels of anxiety, which can be experienced as an “internalized 'anxious worrying' style or as a more externalized 'irritability, shyness, expressed as 'social avoidance' or 'pe...
Depression is a serious mental health illness which affects an individuals’ mind, body and mood. It is a chronic and lifelong health condition (NICE, 2006) thought to be caused by a number of biological factors including neurotransmitter disturbances in the brain and an element of genetic vulnerability; these are often in addition to psychosocial factors such as the occurrence of undesirable life events, limited social network options, poor self esteem and the occurrence of any adverse life events during a persons’ lifetime (Bernstein, 2006). Depression can have an impact on a persons’ ability to do many things including working, engaging with others, participating fully in family life or maintaining relationships, and it can also impact on a person...
The biologic basis of Clinical Depression originates in the brain. Your brain is made up of a complex network of nerve cells, called neurons and of brain chemicals, called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters transmit messages from one neuron to another. Two of these neurotransmitters are not produced in sufficient quantities in a depressed person’s brain. Because of this lack, too few messages get transmitted between neurons and the symptoms of depression occur. In Clinical depression the chemicals in the brain are out-of-balance. New technology allows researchers to take pictures of the brain that show activity levels in the brain. These imaging techniques such as f-MRI and PET scan actually create images of how active different parts of the brain are. Some studies with these kinds of techniques have suggested that the patterns of activation in the brains of depressed people are different than those who are not. These tests can help doctors and researchers learn more about depression and other mental illnesses. Since this research is fairly new, it is not yet used to diagnose clinical depression.
Katon, W., and Sullivan, M. D., (1990) Depression and Chronic Mental Illness. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, v.51. pgs. 8-19
Depression is well known for its mental or emotional symptoms. Symptoms for depression include: persistently sad or unhappy mood, loss of interest or pleasure in previously enjoyable activities, difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions, anxiety, feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, and thoughts of death or dying. “People who have endured a major depressive episode describe the experience as a descent into t...
The human brain controls everything that goes on within the body, but there are many functions of the brain that remain mysterious. Depression is one major disease that remained unexplainable for a period of time. Although the mechanism for this disease is basically unknown, technology has increased within the last decade to help better understand this disorder. It is one of the top mental diseases in the United States affecting overall 6.7 percent of adults and 2.7 percent of children ages 8-15. Depression is caused by the lack of emotional stimuli, which are caused by neurotransmitters. The limbic system contains parts of the brain that control the neurons that output emotional response: the hypothalamus, hippocampus, thalamus, and amygdala.
The first and most obvious place one might look for insight into someone else’s emotional state is the face. There are many obvious expressions on people’s faces that we are accustomed to interpreting without thinking about it, smiling and frowning, for example. However, because these are so obvious, these are the expressions people will try to fake and will fake with reasonable success. Less apparent clues, however may be a better indication of what someone is feeling. For example, someone may crinkle their nose briefly when they dislike something, or begin to squint slightly when they are nervous or under tension (psychologytoday.com). Learning to recognize genuine smiles is also helpful in determining others’ feelings. “Smiling is a big part of facial body language. As a general rule real smiles are symmetrical and produce creases around the eyes and mouth, whereas fake smiles, for ...