Editor’s note: Season 8 of the podcast Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta gets back to basics with an in-depth look at the brain in different states. Each episode will focus on one of these states – the distracted brain, the scared brain, the nourished brain, etc. – to shine a light on what’s going on in our heads and how it affects our bodies.
(CNN) — Depression is increasing in the United States. Chances are, if you don’t have this condition, you definitely know someone who does.
Nearly 18% of American adults, or more than one in six, say they are. currently depressed or undergoing treatment for depressionaccording to a Gallup Poll 2023. In 2015, when Gallup began collecting information on the topic, that figure was less than 11 percent.
Gallup data shows that clinical depression was rising slowly in the country before the pandemic, but grew more quickly afterward, with social isolation, loneliness, fear of infection, psychological burnout, substance abuse, and disruption of mental health care. Rates among women, young adults, and black and Hispanic adults are increasing the fastest.
For adolescents aged 12 to 17, the statistics are equally dire: according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention5 million children in this age group – or just over 20% – experienced an episode of major depression in 2021 (the most recent year for which data is available), including 3.7 million who experienced a serious disability.
Psychiatrist Charles Raison, a professor of human ecology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he himself had struggled with depression. Reason, which is also the director of the Vail Health Behavioral Health Innovation Center And a former mental health expert for CNN Health, described the state of mental health in the United States in one word: “poor.”
“There’s no question that depression, anxiety, suicide and substance abuse have been on the rise in the United States…for probably 20, 25 years, maybe longer,” Raison recently told Raison’s chief medical correspondent. CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, on the podcast. In pursuit of life. “But they’ve really increased over the last 10 years and the data is really consistent.
“The increase is not equal across all age groups,” Raison said. “The people who really suffer are the young people. So, among people aged 15 to 35, that’s where we see this really, really worrying increase.
While the rise in depression among Americans is alarming, what is also troubling is the difficulty in identifying its cause. We can’t see it on a brain scan. We don’t have a blood test for this. We cannot measure its severity precisely.
Raison compared depression to “dropsy” – an old-fashioned term for edema — which could be caused by different underlying conditions or factors. “It could be…heart failure.” It could be pneumonia. It could be cancer. There (are) different reasons for producing these symptoms,” he said.
“Will we ever find a test to diagnose depression? No, because depression is like dropsy…” he said, pointing out different possible underlying causes. “Depression is not something that will stand one test.”
And that may be one of the reasons depression is so difficult to treat.
Take antidepressants such as Prozac, also known by the generic name fluoxetine. It was launched in the country 35 years ago as the first in a new class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. The idea was that depression resulted from a chemical imbalance in the brain and that this imbalance could be corrected by targeting the neurotransmitter serotonin. Serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitorsor SNRI, which target two neurotransmitters, followed in 1993.
But antidepressants doesn’t work for everyone.
“The issue of the use of antidepressants, which are the first-line treatment for depression in the United States, is incredibly complex,” Raison said, noting that they “save some people’s lives.”
“But over the last 20 years we have had to metabolize, as a field, a number of very hard truths about antidepressants and their effectiveness,” he said. “A hard truth, and the most obvious one, is that they don’t work as well as we thought 30 years ago,” estimating that only 30% of patients “get a complete response.”
To learn what promising new treatments are being tried for depression, listen to the full episode of Chasing Life here:
Raison acknowledged that trying to do anything when you’re depressed is an uphill battle. He offered these five tips for taking care of yourself.
Make an appointment with a mental health professional.
“If you constantly feel depressed, if you have lost interest in life, if your sleep and appetite are impaired, if you feel hopeless, if you have thoughts of harming yourself, that sort of thing, it This is depression. it is,” Raison said. Getting help is especially important if you’ve been experiencing these symptoms for a few months.
“All of us who struggle with depression know that having a clinician… can help you – either with psychotherapy or medication… or both,” he said.
It turns out that what’s good for the body is also good for the brain.
“Really try to do the kinds of things you would do for your physical health,” Raison said. “I often tell people, ‘Think about what you would do if you wanted to take care of your heart health and do the same thing. » All of these things are also antidepressants. So manage your weight, eat healthy foods, get enough sleep, get enough exercise, get some sunshine.
Try to maintain close relationships.
“(Hint) #3 is sometimes really hard when you’re depressed. … But that’s probably the most important thing, which is trying to maximize our interpersonal relationships with other people,” Raison said.
“If you have caring, smaller, supportive relationships with other people, that’s an important protective factor against depression.” This is also a factor that can really help overcome depression.
Be persistent in seeking help.
“The way people, especially in the United States, respond to antidepressant medications tends to be very divided,” Raison said. “There is a smaller group of people who just start taking an antidepressant and feel better after a few weeks and…and the depression goes away,” while others have chronic depression.
So if one antidepressant doesn’t work, he would say, “Try another one.”
But don’t be afraid to move forward. “We’ve known for a long time, for example, that people who don’t respond to several antidepressants in a row are less likely to respond to the next one, but they are not less likely to respond to psychotherapy,” he said.
Generate a state of gratitude.
“Work on developing an attitude of gratitude,” Raison said.
Raison admits it’s not always easy when you’re depressed. “If you can make it a habit, it can be very powerful both in preventing depression, but also in making you feel better if you’re depressed,” he said.
We hope these five tips will help you take better care of a depressed brain. Listen full episode here. And join us next week on the Podcast Chasing Life when we explore dating and the brain, and what all that swiping does to us.
