Even though depression and anxiety are different types of disorders, they tend to go together. But why can it happen?Resources:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line: https://www.crisistextline.org/
International Resources: https://yourlifecounts.org/find-help/Hosted by: Brit Garner
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Can We Distinguish Anxiety From Depression?
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Everybody knows what anxiety feels like – it’s annoying and counterproductive and apparently useless, so why does it exist? It turns out your anxiety isn’t useless at all – it’s a result of the sympathetic nervous system (in charge of the fight or flight response), which lets you respond immediately to threats and can also help you meet that looming deadline. But you don’t want your SNS running the whole show – chronic anxiety not only feels crappy, it damages your cells, alters your brain chemistry, and can exacerbate a wide range of health problems. Hank has the whole story in this episode of SciShow.Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids?
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Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.comReferences:
Oxidative Stress & Anxiety
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763246/
Depression & Chronic Stress Accelerates Aging
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109093729.htm
10 Stress-Related Health Problems You Can Fix
http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/features/10-fixable-stress-related-health-problems
Relationship Between Oxidative Stress and Anxiety: Emerging role of antioxidants within therapeutic or preventative approaches
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/17568/InTech-Relationship_between_oxidative_stress_and_anxiety_emerging_role_of_antioxidants_within_therapeutic_or_preventive_approaches.pdf
[♪ INTRO ] If you’ve ever experienced anxiety and depression
— in the clinical sense, I mean — you’ll know that they can feel really different. With anxiety, you’re all ramped up. And with depression, you’re very, very down. Yet they tend to go together. And a lot of medications, especially certain
types of antidepressants, can be used to treat both. We still don’t know a ton about how exactly
anxiety and depression work in the brain — or how antidepressants work to treat them. But over time, psychologists have come to
realize that the two types of conditions are surprisingly similar. They may feel very different in the moment. But they actually have a lot of symptoms in
common, and involve some very similar thought patterns. They might even have similar brain chemistries. So if you’re looking to understand a little
more about how anxiety and depression manifest themselves — whether for yourself or for
someone else in your life — those connections are a good place to start.
Depression and anxiety aren’t really specific
disorders — they’re generic terms for types of disorders. But the most common, and most closely linked,
are major depressive disorder, or MDD, and generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD. In any given year in the U.S., where it’s
easiest to find detailed statistics, about 7% of the population will have MDD, and about
3% will have GAD. Lots of those people have both: About 2/3
of people with major depression also have some kind of anxiety disorder, and about 2/3
of people with generalized anxiety disorder also have major depression. And whether you have one or the other or both,
the same medications are often at the top of the list to help treat it — usually antidepressants. Unsurprisingly, psychologists have noticed
these statistics. But for a long time, we’ve thought of generalized
anxiety and major depression as very different things, and understandably so. Probably the most noticeable symptom of anxiety
is arousal, which in psychology is a technical term rather than a specifically sexual thing. It basically just means being on high alert
— whether psychologically, with increased awareness, or physically, with things like
a racing heart and sweaty palms.
Arousal isn’t part of major depression,
though. And there’s a key symptom of MDD that doesn’t
usually show up in generalized anxiety: low positive affect, which is the technical term
for not getting much pleasure out of life and feeling lethargic and just kind of … blah. So there are important differences between
anxiety and depression, which is part of why they’re still considered separate classes
of disorders. But when you look at the other symptoms, you
start to realize that major depression and generalized anxiety have almost everything
else in common. There’s restlessness, fatigue, irritability,
problems with concentration, sleep disturbances … the list goes on.
And that’s just in the official diagnostic
criteria. So for decades, psychologists have been examining
the models they use to describe anxiety and depression in the brain to see if they point
to a similar source for both types of disorders. They’ve come up with lots of different ideas,
as researchers do, but the most common ones tend to center around the fight or flight
response to stress. Fight or flight kicks in when you’re confronted
with something your mind sees as a threat, and it automatically prepares you to either
fight or run away. And when you think about it, anxiety and depression
are just different types of flight. Psychologists often characterize anxiety as
a sense of helplessness, at its core, and depression as a sense of hopelessness. Anxiety might feel like you’re looking for
ways to fight back. But part of what makes it a disorder is that
it’s not a short-lived feeling that’s easily resolved once you have a plan.
Of course, as with all things mental health,
anxiety disorders can be deeply personal and won’t feel the same for everybody. But clinical anxiety does tend to be more
pervasive. The worry sticks around and starts to take
over your life because it doesn’t feel like something you can conquer. So anxiety and depression might just be slightly
different ways of expressing the same flight response: helplessness or hopelessness. And maybe that’s part of why they so often
go together. That connection also shows up on the biochemical
side of the stress response. There are a lot of hormones involved in this
response, and their effects interact in super complex ways that scientists still don’t
fully understand.
But both depressive and anxiety disorders
are closely associated with an oversensitive stress response system. Researchers think that’s one reason both
of these types of disorders are so much more common in people who’ve experienced major
stresses like trauma or childhood abuse. Those stressors could make their stress response
system more sensitive. The main hormones involved aren’t always
the same, but the changes can cause some of the same symptoms — problems with sleep,
for example. So anxiety and depression seem to be two sides
of a similar reaction to stress, in terms of both thought processes and hormones. Still, that doesn’t really explain why some
antidepressants can treat both anxiety and depression. Because those medications primarily affect
neurotransmitters, the molecules your brain cells use to send messages to each other. If you thought we had a lot left to learn
about how the stress response works, we know even less about what the brain chemistry of
anxiety and depression looks like, or how antidepressants help. But if the thought processes and physical
responses that go along with these disorders aren’t quite as different as they seem on
the surface, it makes sense that the brain chemistry would be similar, too.
And that’s exactly what scientists have
found. More specifically, lots of studies have pointed
to lower levels of the neurotransmitter known as serotonin as a major factor in both anxiety
and depression. Researchers have even identified some more
specific cellular receptors that seem to be involved in both. There’s also some evidence that the way
the brain handles another neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, can be similar in both anxiety
and depression. Since most antidepressants work by increasing
serotonin levels, and some of them also affect norepinephrine, that could explain why they’re
so helpful for both anxiety and depression. Although again, there’s a lot we don’t
know about their exact mechanisms. Ultimately, there’s no denying that in the
moment, anxiety and depression can seem like very different feelings. And if someone has both types of disorders
— well, it’s easy to see how that could feel overwhelming. Like, it’s hard enough treating generalized
anxiety or major depression on their own.
And it’s true that it is often harder to
treat these conditions when someone has both. But maybe not twice as hard. After all, anxiety and depressive disorders
have a lot in common, from their symptoms to the basic brain chemistry behind them to
some of the treatments that can help. The fact that they often go together can be
really tough. But understanding more about why that is has
also pointed us toward better treatments and more effective therapies, that really can
help. Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow
Psych. If you're looking for someone to talk to about
your mental health, we left a few resources in this video’s description. And if you'd like to learn more general info
about treatments, you can watch our episode on misconceptions about antidepressants. [♪ OUTRO ].
Have you ever wondered why do my hands
get all cold and sweaty when I'm nervous? or "Why does my stomach get all tight
when I'm talking to my boss?" Well today we're going to talk about our body and
brain's natural reaction to danger- it's called the "Fight Flight or Freeze"
response. Now our bodies' have developed this amazing reaction to help keep us
safe. For thousands of years humans' biggest challenge was survival. They had
to worry about wild animals, and heights, warring tribes and other dangers. So the
body developed this instinctual way to keep us safe. Now unfortunately in
current day we don't have nearly as many of these real and immediate dangers so a
lot of times this reaction it just makes us uncomfortable. When faced with a real
and immediate danger like a tiger our instincts take over- We have three main
reactions 1.
Fight 2. Run away or 3. Freeze. These come naturally, we don't have to
think about it. These reactions actually turn off the thinking part of our brain-
it's kind of like a Star Trek when the captain says "All power to shields" and
they lower the lights on the bridge. (Yes, I am a nerd!) Now the front part of our
brain-the prefrontal cortex-that's the part that is thinking, words, planning…
that all gets mostly shut down. And the back part of our brain which is reactive
and instinctive gets amped up. This can be really helpful if you're facing a
tiger because if you're facing a tiger and you take time to plan out what your
next move is you're most likely going to get eaten.
However this is not helpful if
your perceived danger is a public speech and the front part of your brain turns
off. Or you're asking out a date and all of a sudden you can't make words come
out of your mouth. That's when it becomes a real pain. Our body does other things
to try and keep us safe it sends extra extra blood to the big
muscles which takes the blood flow away from our extremities like our hands and
feet so that's where the phrase "cold feet" comes from. It makes us start to
sweat so our hands will often get cold and sweaty or cold and clammy. It
turns on the adrenaline glands-those start pumping out, this gives us energy
for a quick burst to either run away or punch someone- but later on that
adrenaline gives us the shakes. It turns off our digestive system because we
don't really need to be digesting that hamburger when we're running away from a
tiger. However when our digestive system turns off that can cause all sorts of
problems like a decreased appetite, tight feeling in the stomach, dry mouth and
even people could get the runs or wet their pants.
Obviously these are all
outcomes that we don't really want. The fight flight freeze response also
tightens the muscles. It heightens some senses like vision gets pinpointed,
creating tunnel vision. Our breathing rate gets shorter and shallower so we're
breathing faster but not deeper. And our heart rate goes up. The fight flight
freeze response also temporarily turns off the immune system. Now that's also a
good thing because again it's all power to shields where we're putting all power
to keeping ourselves alive. But if the fight flight freeze response
is turned on all the time then our immune system is turned off much of the
time, and that's why people who are always stressed out are often getting
sick.
Now with the freeze response we sometimes see a few different things
than the fight-or-flight response. More frequently we'll see people feeling numb,
people shrinking, hiding or complying- just going along with what the person or
the thing in power seems to be wanting. Now this response- this fight flight
freeze response- could be really helpful in situations where there's
real and immediate danger.
And it's meant to work in short bursts. The problem that
happens is when we are constantly having this reaction to things that aren't real
dangers they're just perceived threats. Like a boss asking to talk with us or a
public speaking event. When we are constantly in the fight flight freeze
response then our body gets trapped in this elevated state for a long period of
time. This leads to exhaustion, insomnia, muscle tension, digestive
problems, and frequent illnesses. In an upcoming video we are going to
teach you how to train your mind and body to respond differently to threats,
to resolve anxiety, and to train your nervous system to return to calm quickly.
For now the best thing you can do is to just start noticing your body's reaction.
Notice what happens when you're going into fight flight or freeze mode and
just give it a label like "I'm having a fight response right now". I hope this was helpful thanks for watching and take care .
Should you stress about stress?
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FACEBOOK – http://on.fb.me/12fEcFgWritten and created by Mitchell Moffit (twitter @mitchellmoffit) and Gregory Brown (twitter @whalewatchmeplz).Further Reading:Social Hierarchy and Health
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5722/648.shortKaroshi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8DshiCortisol
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v1/n1/abs/nn0598_69.html
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=209083
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12609-010-0021-5Social Support and Stress
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322303004657