{"id":72639,"date":"2020-06-17T16:44:42","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T16:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/72639"},"modified":"2020-06-17T16:44:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T16:44:42","slug":"why-do-depression-and-anxiety-go-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/72639","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Depression and Anxiety Go Together?"},"content":{"rendered":"[\u266a INTRO ] If you\u2019ve ever experienced anxiety and depression\n\u2014 in the clinical sense, I mean \u2014 you\u2019ll know that they can feel really different. With anxiety, you\u2019re all ramped up. And with depression, you\u2019re very, very down. Yet they tend to go together. And a lot of medications, especially certain\ntypes of antidepressants, can be used to treat both. We still don\u2019t know a ton about how exactly\nanxiety and depression work in the brain \u2014 or how antidepressants work to treat them. But over time, psychologists have come to\nrealize 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\ncommon, and involve some very similar thought patterns. They might even have similar brain chemistries. So if you\u2019re looking to understand a little\nmore about how anxiety and depression manifest themselves \u2014 whether for yourself or for\nsomeone else in your life \u2014 those connections are a good place to start.

Depression and anxiety aren\u2019t really specific\ndisorders \u2014 they\u2019re generic terms for types of disorders. But the most common, and most closely linked,\nare major depressive disorder, or MDD, and generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD. In any given year in the U.S., where it\u2019s\neasiest to find detailed statistics, about 7% of the population will have MDD, and about\n3% will have GAD. Lots of those people have both: About 2\/3\nof people with major depression also have some kind of anxiety disorder, and about 2\/3\nof people with generalized anxiety disorder also have major depression. And whether you have one or the other or both,\nthe same medications are often at the top of the list to help treat it \u2014 usually antidepressants. Unsurprisingly, psychologists have noticed\nthese statistics. But for a long time, we\u2019ve thought of generalized\nanxiety and major depression as very different things, and understandably so. Probably the most noticeable symptom of anxiety\nis arousal, which in psychology is a technical term rather than a specifically sexual thing. It basically just means being on high alert\n\u2014 whether psychologically, with increased awareness, or physically, with things like\na racing heart and sweaty palms.

Arousal isn\u2019t part of major depression,\nthough. And there\u2019s a key symptom of MDD that doesn\u2019t\nusually show up in generalized anxiety: low positive affect, which is the technical term\nfor not getting much pleasure out of life and feeling lethargic and just kind of \u2026 blah. So there are important differences between\nanxiety and depression, which is part of why they\u2019re still considered separate classes\nof disorders. But when you look at the other symptoms, you\nstart to realize that major depression and generalized anxiety have almost everything\nelse in common. There\u2019s restlessness, fatigue, irritability,\nproblems with concentration, sleep disturbances \u2026 the list goes on.

And that\u2019s just in the official diagnostic\ncriteria. So for decades, psychologists have been examining\nthe models they use to describe anxiety and depression in the brain to see if they point\nto a similar source for both types of disorders. They\u2019ve come up with lots of different ideas,\nas researchers do, but the most common ones tend to center around the fight or flight\nresponse to stress. Fight or flight kicks in when you\u2019re confronted\nwith something your mind sees as a threat, and it automatically prepares you to either\nfight or run away. And when you think about it, anxiety and depression\nare just different types of flight. Psychologists often characterize anxiety as\na sense of helplessness, at its core, and depression as a sense of hopelessness. Anxiety might feel like you\u2019re looking for\nways to fight back. But part of what makes it a disorder is that\nit\u2019s not a short-lived feeling that\u2019s easily resolved once you have a plan.

Of course, as with all things mental health,\nanxiety disorders can be deeply personal and won\u2019t feel the same for everybody. But clinical anxiety does tend to be more\npervasive. The worry sticks around and starts to take\nover your life because it doesn\u2019t feel like something you can conquer. So anxiety and depression might just be slightly\ndifferent ways of expressing the same flight response: helplessness or hopelessness. And maybe that\u2019s part of why they so often\ngo together. That connection also shows up on the biochemical\nside of the stress response. There are a lot of hormones involved in this\nresponse, and their effects interact in super complex ways that scientists still don\u2019t\nfully understand.

But both depressive and anxiety disorders\nare closely associated with an oversensitive stress response system. Researchers think that\u2019s one reason both\nof these types of disorders are so much more common in people who\u2019ve experienced major\nstresses like trauma or childhood abuse. Those stressors could make their stress response\nsystem more sensitive. The main hormones involved aren\u2019t always\nthe same, but the changes can cause some of the same symptoms \u2014 problems with sleep,\nfor example. So anxiety and depression seem to be two sides\nof a similar reaction to stress, in terms of both thought processes and hormones. Still, that doesn\u2019t really explain why some\nantidepressants can treat both anxiety and depression. Because those medications primarily affect\nneurotransmitters, the molecules your brain cells use to send messages to each other. If you thought we had a lot left to learn\nabout how the stress response works, we know even less about what the brain chemistry of\nanxiety and depression looks like, or how antidepressants help. But if the thought processes and physical\nresponses that go along with these disorders aren\u2019t quite as different as they seem on\nthe surface, it makes sense that the brain chemistry would be similar, too.

And that\u2019s exactly what scientists have\nfound. More specifically, lots of studies have pointed\nto lower levels of the neurotransmitter known as serotonin as a major factor in both anxiety\nand depression. Researchers have even identified some more\nspecific cellular receptors that seem to be involved in both. There\u2019s also some evidence that the way\nthe brain handles another neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, can be similar in both anxiety\nand depression. Since most antidepressants work by increasing\nserotonin levels, and some of them also affect norepinephrine, that could explain why they\u2019re\nso helpful for both anxiety and depression. Although again, there\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t\nknow about their exact mechanisms. Ultimately, there\u2019s no denying that in the\nmoment, anxiety and depression can seem like very different feelings. And if someone has both types of disorders\n\u2014 well, it\u2019s easy to see how that could feel overwhelming. Like, it\u2019s hard enough treating generalized\nanxiety or major depression on their own.

And it\u2019s true that it is often harder to\ntreat these conditions when someone has both. But maybe not twice as hard. After all, anxiety and depressive disorders\nhave a lot in common, from their symptoms to the basic brain chemistry behind them to\nsome of the treatments that can help. The fact that they often go together can be\nreally tough. But understanding more about why that is has\nalso pointed us toward better treatments and more effective therapies, that really can\nhelp. Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow\nPsych. If you're looking for someone to talk to about\nyour mental health, we left a few resources in this video\u2019s description. And if you'd like to learn more general info\nabout treatments, you can watch our episode on misconceptions about antidepressants. [\u266a OUTRO ].","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[\u266a INTRO ] If you\u2019ve ever experienced anxiety and depression \u2014 in the clinical sense, I mean \u2014 you\u2019ll know that they can feel really different. With anxiety, you\u2019re all ramped up. And with depression, you\u2019re very, very down. Yet they tend to go together. And a lot of medications, especially certain types of antidepressants, … Continue reading Why Do Depression and Anxiety Go Together?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":72640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,5,781,4771,409],"tags":[696,518,43491,43514,39208,953,43510,34019,34501,37013,43493,37009,34387,34386,471,33818,43509,38033,43507,957,43512,33747,35621,702,517,34385,43513,4761,5696,43511,33854,41432,43496],"class_list":["post-72639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anxiety","category-causes-and-prevention","category-crime-justice","category-disasters-accidents","category-health","tag-anxiety","tag-brain","tag-brit","tag-chemistry","tag-conditions","tag-depression","tag-diagnose","tag-disorder","tag-fight-or-flight","tag-gad","tag-garner","tag-generalized-anxiety-disorder","tag-green","tag-hank","tag-health","tag-learn","tag-low-positive-affect","tag-major-depressive-disorder","tag-mdd","tag-mental-health","tag-neurotransmitters","tag-norepinephrine","tag-personal","tag-psychology","tag-science","tag-scishow","tag-serotonin","tag-sleep","tag-stress","tag-stress-response-system","tag-symptoms","tag-treatments","tag-why-do-depression-and-anxiety-go-together"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/72639_maxresdefault.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}