How Will You Really Feel During Depression Treatment?

If you’re taking an antidepressant to treat depression—whether it’s for the first time, you’ve recently changed medications, or you’re experiencing a repeat episode of depression—you’re looking forward to feeling like your old self again. And chances are good that eventually, you will.

But it’s important to be realistic about how you’re likely to feel these first few weeks. Otherwise, you might get discouraged and give up before treatment has a chance to work.

“When side effects occur, the vast majority arise early in treatment,” says Rajnish Mago, M.D., director of the Mood Disorders Program at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “Most tend to diminish within a few days or weeks.” And although they may be a nuisance, most are not medically dangerous.

If you aren’t feeling any better at all within a month, your doctor may adjust your treatment by changing the dose of your medicine, switching to another medication, or adding psychotherapy or a second medicine to the mix.

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Social media for two…

Facebook recently made headlines twice – first, when the company went public and again, when founder Mark Zuckerberg tied the knot. Although Facebook’s IPO was disappointing to those who had high expectations, we can hope at least that Zuckerberg’s marriage will soar, even if his stock did not.

One way the Zuckerbergs – and all couples – can help maintain a healthy connection with each other is to be cautious about the way they use Facebook and all social media, for that matter. As I’ve written before in this column, social networking tools can bring people together, but they can also pull couples apart. Think about it: You and your partner might be sitting next to each other on the couch or in bed, tapping away on your individual laptops, smart phones, or iPads, lost in a virtual world where flirting with a stranger, friend, or old flame is just a click away. In other words, you’re turning on social media—and maybe turning on to someone else, too—even as you tune each other out. From laptops, to smart phones, to tablets, today’s gadgets allow us to remain connected 24/7—yet that doesn’t necessarily mean that we are connected to our partner

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How Feeling Lonely Can Shorten Your Life

2012-06-20

s loneliness lethal? According to two new studies published online Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, living alone or feeling lonely can increase your chances of disability and early death.

In one study, researchers at Harvard Medical School followed nearly 45,000 people who had heart disease or were at high risk of developing it. Over four years, the study authors tracked the participants’ health and found that those who lived alone were more likely to die from heart attack, stroke or other heart-related problems than those who lived with others.

The association was especially marked by age: for the youngest participants, aged 45 to 65, living alone increased the risk of early death by 24%; in people aged 66 to 80, solitary living was associated with a 12% increased risk of death; among those over 80, there was no link between living arrangements and risk of heart-related death.

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5 Tips to Overcome Emotional Eating

2012-06-11

Could work stress be causing your expanding waistline? A recent Finnish study found that women who had job burnout were more likely to turn to food for comfort and to eat uncontrollably, compared with women who weren’t overworked. The study‘s authors suggested that obesity treatment should include evaluations of people’s work stress and emotional eating habits.

It’s not just a stressful workweek, but also a fight with the spouse, a visit with the in-laws or an all-around low mood that can make the chocolate ice cream beckon that much more seductively. “Stress, anxiety, depression, really any kind of strong emotion can trigger an emotional binge,” says Dr. Joy Jacobs, clinical eating disorder psychologist and assistant clinical professor at University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. “Emotional eating happens whenever someone has an emotion they do not know how to handle, even happiness, and they channel it into an eating experience.”

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Should Depressed People Avoid Having Children?

2012-06-06

Comedian Sarah Silverman, who routinely courts controversy with her edgy humor, recently made an attention-getting statement of a more intimate nature: because of her personal and family history of depression, she declared that she would not have biological children, to avoid passing her mental problems to the next generation. “I don’t want kids,” she said on The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet. “I know that I have this depression and that it’s in my family. Every family has their stuff but, for me, I just don’t feel strong enough to see that in a child.”

Pundits across the Internet praised Silverman for her honesty and sense of responsibility, duly citing research that shows that depression is deeply heritable. People with a parent or sibling with major depression are two to three times more likely than average to develop it themselves.

But what the commenters didn’t mention is that the same genes that can cause depression may also encourage the sensitivity and sensibility that gives Silverman her creative talent. Indeed, some research suggests that the same exact genetics that might lead to depression can also lead to mental superhealth, depending on whether a person endured high stress in early childhood or had a calmer, more nurturing environment.

(MORE: The Measure of a Mother’s Love: How Early Neglect Derails Child Development)

Atlantic writer David Dobbs has called such genes “orchid genes.” Like the finicky flowers, they thrive and outshine ordinary plants when grown in the perfect conditions, but otherwise rapidly wilt and die. In contrast, he describes “dandelion genes,” which allow healthy development, whether the setting is harsh or bountiful.

Some of the genes involved in risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), addiction and depression seem to share this quality, leading to vulnerability if early life is difficult but otherwise providing advantages. A recent study found also that people who had genes associated with better memory — a powerful aid to learning and intelligence — were more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder after trauma, compared with those without the same genetic variants. People with better memories had more flashbacks.

Dobbs writes:

Focus on just the bad-environment results, and you see only vulnerability. Focus on the good-environment results, and you see that the risk alleles [or gene variants] usually produce better results than the protective ones. Securely raised 7-year-old boys with the DRD4 risk allele for ADHD, for instance, show fewer symptoms than their securely raised protective-allele peers. Non-abused teenagers with that same risk allele show lower rates of conduct disorder. Non-abused teens with the risky serotonin-transporter [gene variant] suffer less depression than do non-abused teens with the protective allele.

(MORE: Does A Better Memory Equal Greater PTSD Risk?)

Basically, whether a gene is “good” or “bad” depends on where it “lives” and how it is “raised.” And I would argue that even when people with orchid genes don’t have the benefit of a good early environment, their innate sensitivity to their condition can still often allow talent to flourish.

Artists and writers have long noted a correlation between mood disorders and creativity. A recent study of 300,000 Swedish families affected by psychiatric disorders found that people with bipolar disorder are overrepresented in creative professions. That same study showed that healthy relatives of people with schizophrenia are more likely to have creative careers, a finding that supports earlier research suggesting that the genes that lead to schizophrenia in certain conditions or combinations may produce heightened creativity in others.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in autism. Notoriously, many of the most successful people in computer science and engineering have traits similar to those seen in people with high-functioning autism — or they have the condition itself. Relatives of people with autism are more likely to be engineers, mathematicians or computer scientists, compared with the families of non-autistic people. One study found that students majoring in technical professions were more likely to have autistic relatives, while those majoring in humanities were more likely to have depressed, addicted or bipolar family members.

(MORE: Study: Some Autistic Brains Really Are Wired Differently)

This means that if you eliminate the genes that carry these mental-health risks, you may also do away with their associated benefits. The research suggests strongly that the genes associated with our most tragic psychological conditions may also carry the potential for our greatest talents and skills.

And so, while I wouldn’t presume to advise anyone about their personal reproductive decisions, I don’t think it’s necessarily “more responsible” for people with depression or other brain differences to forgo having children. Obviously, someone who cannot function due to psychiatric disease should not set out to become pregnant, and people whose conditions are untreatable or unbearable to them may want to prevent any possibility of passing on the same kind of suffering. But we should remember that, contrary to claims that the dark poet Sylvia Plath would have inevitably become insufferably twee if given Prozac, successfully treating depression or any such condition does not erase or eliminate genius, merely pain.

Consequently, as we as a society get better at identifying the genes that contribute to depressive, schizophrenic or autistic traits, we need to consider not just disabilities but potential. By selecting against our “worst” genes, we may run the risk of losing our greatest gifts.

MORE: The Perils of ‘Metabolic Chauvinism’

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/05/should-depressed-people-avoid-having-children/?iid=hl-main-lede#ixzz1wzJCTc6K

Stay-at-Home Moms Report More Sadness, Anger and Depression

2012-06-04

Not long ago, there was a dust-up when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen accused Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, of not fully comprehending this country’s economic issues because she had “never worked a day in her life.”

Ann Romney responded, on Twitter: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys,” she wrote. “Believe me, it was hard work.”

The controversy swirled for days: stay-at-home mothers — SAHMs — had been dissed, and they weren’t happy about it. Amid the political and cultural fall-out, Elizabeth Mendes, deputy managing editor of Gallup.com, was paying attention. Gallup.com surveys 1,000 Americans each day about topics that percolate to the top of the news cycle. The editorial team noticed that news about moms — the stay-at-home sort and the working variety — was hot. So they decided to train their sights on the maternal demographic.

“The discussion around Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen started a lot of conversations about the different types of groups of moms,” says Mendes. “We thought, What can we look at to see what’s going on with this population?”

What they found doesn’t bode well for the morale of the SAHM contingent, according to results released in May that hint at the possibility that women’s happiness just might depend on their employment status.

Gallup zeroed in on all kinds of metrics for health and well-being, comparing happiness, anger and sadness, among other feelings, in working moms and those who stayed at home, as well as in women who weren’t mothers.

Gallup looked first at categories including anger, worry, stress, depression, smiling and laughter. It found that non-working women with a child under 18 at home experienced more worry, sadness, stress and anger than moms who are employed full-time or part-time.

One of the most noticeable differences revolved around questions about depression. Gallup asked the women polled if they’d ever been diagnosed with depression and found that SAHMs were more likely to say yes than working moms. Of SAHMs, 28% reported receiving a diagnosis of depression at some point compared with 17% each for employed moms and employed childless women. “Moms who are employed, full-time or part-time, look more like the employed women group than SAHMs,” says Mendes.

So does the data suggest that employment is the key to happiness? Well, it’s true that employed moms experience fewer negative emotions than SAHMs, according to Gallup’s survey. “It’s certainly possible that it’s because they are working,” says Mendes.

Gallup also compared different income groups, splitting women into high-income, middle-income and low-income categories to explore whether finances played a role in mothers’ reported well-being. Across all three income groups, SAHMs did worse on measures of sadness, anger and depression than employed moms.

When Gallup looked at other measures of well-being — such as happiness, enjoyment, learning something interesting and stress — there were no significant differences between working moms and SAHMs in the middle- and high-income groups. But differences remained in the lower income groups. “In general, we know that a very high percentage of Americans report happiness,” says Mendes. “So it might be endemic.”

Says Mendes: “This suggests there might be something about working that is creating more positive emotions for employed moms, or there might be something about staying at home that’s creating more negative emotions,” says Mendes.

This is not the first survey to conclude that working serves moms best. In December, a study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that working moms are healthier and happier than mothers who stay at home when their children are babies and preschoolers. On the other hand, 2009 figures from the Pew Research Institute reflect a different reality. An equal number of SAHMs and working moms — 36% — reported feeling “very happy.”

So much for the mommy wars. At least as far as U.S. kids are concerned, the finding that moms who work for pay and those who don’t are equally content is a really good thing.

Bonnie Rochman is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @brochman. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/01/stay-at-home-moms-report-more-sadness-anger-and-depression-than-working-moms/#ixzz1wnhZMzze