Posted by ItsHowdyDudyTime on November 27, 2002, at 21:11:02
In reply to Is depression damaging my brain?, posted by catmint on November 26, 2002, at 0:54:02
OK I found out I was posting those in Spanish and coming out weird. This should come out normally.
To answer your question, yes depression does damage the brain. Particularly when the depression is severe, left untreated or partially treated for long time periods. What is a long time period? Several years is what I was told by a famous TRD researcher at a elite teaching hospital. Severe depression causes literal atrophy of brain tissue, the frontal lobes shrink in size, the hippocampus atropies. There are many physical brain changes that occur in severe depression.
This is all the reason to catch it early, get a correct diagnosis early on and get on the correct class of psychiatric medication early on. Stringing things along only prolongs recovery. Those who have had severe, untreated or partially treated depression for years on end oftentimes find it nearly impossible to fully recover no matter what they do. This is the hard, sad reality of severe mental illness.
ECT is probably your best bet if you are one of these folks who has ignored your mood disorder for years. MAOIs are also good for longstanding, severe and unsuccessfully treated depression. MAOIs can be combined with mood stabilizers like lithium or depakote in bipolar individuals.
Severe mood disorders are nothing to play around with. They tend to sneak up on you, snowball, get worse and worse and one day you realize you are chronically disabled...or worse almost dead. All because you didnt handle it properly in the beginning. Do not underestimate the severity and lethality of a severe mood disorder and Im not even talking about suicide here. Im talking about things like you will never have another good night of sleep for the rest of your life, severe cognition problems, lack of sex drive for the rest of your life which results in inability to maintain meaningful relationships with the opposite sex. Its just bad news and its too bad more people dont understand the true nature of severe depression or manic depression left untreated or undertreated.
Howdy Doody
poster:ItsHowdyDudyTime
thread:129341
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021127/msgs/129658.html