syrinx

New MRI studies (what else did you expect?) show that people with major depressive disorder "appear to react more strongly when anticipating pain." And their pain sensitivity circuitry seems to be functioning differently than other folks'.

“Chronic pain and depression are common and often overlapping syndromes,” ... Recurring or chronic pain occurs in more than 75 percent of patients with depression, and between 30 percent and 60 percent of patients with chronic pain report symptoms of depression.“Understanding the neurobiological basis of this relationship is important because the presence of comorbid pain contributes significantly to poorer outcomes and increased cost of treatment in major depressive disorder.”

That's why we depressives always say things probably aren't going to be as bad as you think they'll be ... they'll probably be worse... or is it the other way around? Things are never as bad as we imagine they'll be? Why it's so hard to keep a major depressive person down, they've already suffered more anticipating in advance that when the worst life can deal them happens, it seems somewhat anticlimactic...and so on and so on, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Oh yeah, and Obama got elected in the USA. Turns out there was a pony after all, if you're familiar with the joke.

tags: pain research depression