centers were under the care of our county's mental health clinic. I became concerned about them prescribing
addicts more drugs. This is when I really began studying depression and the adverse side effects of the drugs
these clinicians were prescribing. In a class we took together, my wife wrote an article on depression;
Symptoms of Depression: The act of depressing or the state of being depressed. Low spirits, feeling moody
or blue; (Psychiatry), a lowering of vital powers, melancholy, especially; psychopathic melancholy leading to
mental disorder. (Funk & Wagnall's, New Comprehensive International Dictionary). One fourth of all women have
a major bout with depression at sometime in their lives, but sometimes the symptoms are so masked in illness,
that they don't realize that depression is causing the problem. Family physician's hear complaints of headaches,
backaches, or the blahs, and often patient's get undiagnosed because they remain unaware that there problem
could be related to a mood disorder. (Woman's Encyclopedia of Health & Emotional Healing, Page 65).
Major depression is far more than unrelenting sadness, or an inability to enjoy lives pleasures. The classic
symptoms include severe disturbances, in appetite and sleep patterns, namely insomnia and drastic weight loss.
Other women tend to overeat, sweat carbohydrates and sleep excessively. It isn't "the blues" or feeling low for a
few hours, it isn't sadness that comes after a relationship breakup, loss of job, death of a family member, or
failing to meet a goal. It is a whole body illness with changes in body chemistry that causes a variety of
symptoms.
Chronic depression is when your symptoms become increasingly severe until they disrupt your every day
routine. You also have feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or hopelessness. You feel restless, irritable and have
difficulty concentrating, remembering.
Women in unhappy, unhealthy marriages are much more likely to be depressed than married men, or single
women. Mothers of young children, and also poverty of single mother's, lead to major depression. Hereditary
factors, infertility, menstruation and childbirth can be problems for mood swings in depression.
Women appear to be more vulnerable to depression than men, but are better equipped to handle such an
emotional and physical crisis. Women are far less likely to succeed in ending their lives by suicide than their
male counterparts. Women are more open and at ease with their doctors. This allows women to reach out for
help, before it is too late.
Family structures have disintegrated to the point, where we no longer well that we can count on the kind of
emotional support that our parents and grandparents received within there families. Also, the influences of
religious, moral and cultural traditions have changed. Our trust in our government and educational systems is
no longer as secured as the days gone by.
Therefore, women tend to react rather than to act, and to focus more on relationships with others as a source of
happiness and self-esteem than do men. Women are also more likely to blame and punish themselves, even for
events over which they have no control. Men on the other hand, tend to respond to frustration and
disappointment by acting with violence and substance abuse rather than with introspection and depression. In
other words, men are more likely to explode rather than implode when faced with stress? (Women Doctor's
Guide To Depression, Page 7).
Women feel less secure, less able to trust their own instincts, in terms of violence, than do their male
counterparts. Thus, perhaps is the cause of why women are becoming even more susceptible to mood
disorders like depression. However, men hide their emotions better than men causing society grave concern.
There are three primary categories of depression: Major depression, dysthymia, and bipolar disorder. Major
depression is a disorder that significantly alters behavior and health often interferes with one’s ability to manage
one’s daily life. In its most severe form, it may require psychiatric hospitalization for a period of time. Dysthymia,
or chronic mild depression tends to have milder symptoms than major depression, but also can be longer
lasting, whether or not dysthymia is a separate entity from major depression or simply a less intense version of
the same disorder remains a subject of debate.
Finally, bipolar disorder involves periods of manic, (high strung, high-energy) behavior followed by periods of
depression, and is probably the most serious of depressive disorders. Bipolar disorder may require both
pharmacologic (drug) treatment and therapeutic intervention. At times, bipolar disorder can cause psychiatric
emergency requiring recurrent psychiatric hospitalization. (Woman Doctors Guide to Depression, Page 46).
The human brain and nervous system form a vast communications network, larger and more complexes than
the long distance companies. Every emotion we feel, action we take, and physiologic function we do is
processed through the brain and the nerve fibers. These fibers extend down the spinal cord and throughout the
body.
The remarkable advances made in medical technology, have been able to trace how the limbic system registers
emotion, and then produces emotional reactions, with cooperation of other parts of the brain and body.
Experiments show that emotional opposites like happiness and sadness involve quite independent patterns of
activity.
When it comes to depression, it seems that the same area of the brain appears to be involved in both
depression and ordinary sadness, but in different waves.
This could then explain the emptiness and numbness many depressed people report. It also appears that men
and women might process sadness very differently.
In women, sadness causes much more activity in the brain than that of men. This could explain how and why
women tend to experience period of more profound sadness than men, and suffer twice the rate of depression.
Sadness, joy, dread, regret, anticipation, awe, the extraordinary variety of depth, of our human emotion! This is
our most treasured quality. Our ability to experience emotion our most precious gift! Being healthy means being
able to experience joy as well as sadness, anger as well as passivity, contentedness as well as frustration. For
this experience to occur, our brain cells must be able to communicate with one another, to send messages from
one cell to the next, and from one center of our brain activity to the other. Biochemical balance appears to be an
important key to mental health.
Chronobiology studies the importance of natural body rhythms to overall mental and physical health. Let's look
at what science knows about where in the body our emotions and moods reside. Scientists estimate that they've
learned a full 95 percent of what they know about brain anatomy and physiology during the last decade alone.
What they've discovered is that the "mind" (thoughts, emotions, moods, and memories) and the "brain' (tissues,
chemicals, and nerve cells) are not separate entities but instead intimately intertwined. Mental experiences
affect the way the brain functions, and brain processes affect the way we think, feel, and behave. (Woman
Doctors Guide to Depression, Page 55.
It might seem that having an emotional crisis could actually work to fight disease since it triggers the immune
system to take action. However, the immune system becomes overworked if constantly stimulated, eventually
losing its effectiveness and leaving the body open to disease. This explains why illness tends to occur during, or
immediately following, periods of stress.
It also shows another link between depression and many physical illnesses. Severely depressed heart attack
patients are about five times as likely to die within six months of leaving the hospital as patients who aren't
depressed. Thoughts and emotions act on immune system cells and are not folly understood. It appears that the
brain is capable of triggering the immune system to perform in certain ways, but when it senses fear, it can
trigger the heart to beat faster.
Like neurotransmitters, chemicals were once thought to exist only in the brain, but have since been found
throughout the body. Please keep in mind that suffering from depression can leave us more vulnerable to a host
of other illnesses as well, both psychiatric (like anxiety disorders or substance abuse) and medical (like heart
disease and cancer problems).
The sun brings light each morning and takes it away at dusk triggering the release of inactivation of certain
hormones that trigger our mood and behavior. We don't go to sleep when it's dark only out of habit, or because
darkness makes activity more difficult or even just because we're tired. This is largely because the body
produces a hormone called melatonin, known as "the chemical expression of darkness", when the eyes tell the
brain that it is dark outside.
Melatonin signals the rest of the body that it is time to rest. When the sun comes up, the body stops producing
the melatonin that triggers the release of the more action oriented hormones, such as cortisol. Our body
temperature and blood pressure begin to rise, revving the body up for daytime activity.
Episodes of depression and bipolar disorder occur much more in fall and winter than they do in spring and
summer months. This tendency is so pervasive that a category of depression called SAD (seasonal affective
disorder) has been created.
About ten million Americans suffer with SAD every year, usually in the months from October through April. Due
to the amount of light to which we are exposed lessens significantly during the winter months, causing scientists
to believe that people with SAD, most of who are women, may be particularly sensitive to the concurrent
increase in melatonin secretions. (Woman Doctor Guide to Depression, Page 68).
Chronobiologists have discovered a number of fascinating things about how these rhythms affect our health.
Experiments show that even after being awake more than twenty hours, people free of time cues slept twice as
long when they went to bed when their temperature was at its highest (in early evening) than it was during its
lowest (in the early morning).
Our senses of hearing, taste, and smell tend to be most acute, strangely enough, in the middle of the night
(around 3 A. M.). They then fall off during the morning, then rise again to a new height between 5 and 7 P.M.,
which may be one of the reasons why the evening meal tends to be more sumptuous than a breakfast or lunch
time. Tolerance for pain is at its highest in the afternoon, which is why it might make sense that this is the best
time of day to visit a dentist or participate in strenuous activity.
Chronobiology explores the effect rhythms have on our mental health, including their influence on depression
and bipolar disorder, sense normal nighttime increase in melatonin secretion are absent in three out of four
depressed people studied.
In patients with bipolar disorder the melatonin rhythm seems completely desynchronized, with more melatonin
produced during depressive phases, a less during manic periods. One reason for this disruption is that
melatonin is derived from the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is also in an unbalanced state in most people
with depression and bipolar disorder. (Woman Doctor's Guide to Depression, Page 67)
Women in their forties and fifties having unmet expectations, and the fear that they have nothing that can
replace their children, or empty nest syndrome, are one of the more troubling and stressful challenges today.
For some, this stress can trigger an addiction to alcohol or other drugs, or even cause an existing dependence
for depression to deepen.
People who are very anxious or compulsively driven to "succeed" often become self destructive in this process.
A number of successful physicians have stated that because of their ever increasing need to maintain their
pace, they have became dependent upon a variety of sedative and stimulant drugs, chiefly barbiturates to help
them to sleep, and amphetamines to give them the energy required to maintain their tremendous pace.
The need for larger and larger doses to produce the same effects resulted in a cycle of dependence habituation
that progressively causes more severe withdrawal symptoms. By the time they consult with others, this
syndrome had begun to impair their work and jeopardize their careers, until under pressure from families and
colleagues they sought treatment to help them withdraw from these drugs.
While it may seem curious that professional people in a position of community responsibility should fall prey to
such a self-destructive habit, in fact this kind of drug abuse is not uncommon among people in high-pressure
occupations, and especially in those where there is ready access to medication. These doctors' drug abuse
began, in fact, as unmonitored self-medication, and only gradually developed into a problematic dependence.
(The Courage to Live, Page 112).
It is not surprising, that they should have turned to barbiturates. Their self-imposed heavy workload created
anxiety. The anxiety made them sleepless, at night as well as during the day, and sedatives were the obvious
solution.
This same pattern of abuse is often found among hard-driving executives in the business world. Their pressured
life-style makes many of them turn not to drugs but to the most readily available addictive substance in our
society; alcohol.
The link between alcohol abuse and self-destruction is sometimes difficult to establish in a society that makes
alcohol available almost everywhere, in restaurants, theaters, airplanes, commuter trains, and even,
supermarkets, and drugstores. Drinking in this country connotes sociability, freedom, and the "good life". (The
Courage to Live, Page 113).
Drinking plays an important symbolic role in rites of birth, confirmation, marriage, anniversaries, retirement. It
also plays a role in people getting hired, fired, promoted, divorced, or honored. It becomes an occasion for the
invitation to have a drink. It can help people to unwind after a hectic day. In moderation, alcohol can have a
beneficial effect. However, everyone’s body chemistry is different, in that, what would be excessive for one, may
not have the same effect on another.
Alcohol, as is any drug has addictive properties. This means that progressive use of any substance can lead to
addiction. Alcohol reduces anxiety, but it also dulls the senses and warps judgment. As the use of it grows, so
do physiological problems. Appetite and enthusiasm may decline. Sleep may be restless and troubled. Irritability
and depression may ensue. (The Courage to Live, Page 114).
Women, and Native Americans have a strong propensity for addiction, coupled with alcohol, and depression,
these often form a tragic triangle for these. Alcoholism and depression have genetic components, and they
often run together through families.
Approximately 40 percent of all adults who abuse alcohol or other drugs are women. More than 70 percent of
women at the Betty Ford Center visit the treatment center for alcohol addiction. According to studies conducted
by the National Institute of Mental Health, half of all women alcoholics are seriously depressed and two-thirds of
them are depressed before they begin abusing alcohol. (A Woman Doctor's Guide to Depression, Page 96).
Self-destruction or suicide? It is somewhat surprising to discovery that which points to an interesting factor to
consider when attempting to predict who will commit, or attempt to commit, suicide, and when. It is not always the
most obviously depressed people who are at risk for suicide.
Those to watch out for are, often the patient's who show a sudden or uncustomary sense of contentment after a
period of marked depression. They exhibit not radically disturbed behavior, but what would be called an
ominous calm, like the calm before a storm.
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