syrinx

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091005123055.htm

there's a brain-body connection between depression and the immune system's inflammation response to illness/infection. Trouble is, until now, it hasn't been known in which direction the connection flows. Now scientists have determined which came first, so to speak. Which is all the more reason depression needs to be treated as a medical problem and not an "attitude" problem.

tags: depression

At least that's the result they got at this study in New South Wales.

Those in the treatment program completed six online lessons and weekly homework assignments, received weekly email contact from a clinical psychologist and contributed to a moderated online forum with other participants. They received an average of eight email contacts each from a qualified psychologist.After completing the program, more than a third (34 percent) no longer met the criteria to be diagnosed as depressed – a result similar to face-to-face therapy.

tags: internet depression

http://www.sciencecodex.com/cognitive_behavioral_intervention_helps_prevent_depression_among_atrisk_teens

Adolescent-onset depression is strongly associated with chronic and recurrent depression in adulthood, and despite substantial progress in treatments, only about 25 percent of depressed youth receive treatment and at least 20 percent develop recurrent, persistent, and chronic de

tags: depression

Fellow runs a blog reprinting Pearls Before Swine comics. Wasn't 2008 the year of the Rat?

tags: humor depression holiday

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