Lifestyle Factors and Environmental Causes of Major Depression

All of us can claim that we’ve been depressed once in our lives. However, there exists a genuine kind of depression different from the common usage. This illness can easily be treated with proper guidance, but can also lead to serious complications when not addressed. The discussion below will focus on the common causes of experiencing a major depression.

Most of us see depression as being in a state of extreme sadness, but in the field of psychology there is a huge difference between a simple case of extreme sadness and clinical depression. As mentioned, all of us will face situations that bring sadness at some periods in our lives. What makes clinical depression different is that it exhibits more physical symptoms than the normal negative feeling. 

A person suffering from real depression has no logical basis in exhibiting the emotion. They cannot just follow the common friendly advice that it is all in the mind. Depression can endure in the system for several weeks, months, or years. An extremely sad person may feel bad, but he or she will go on with living—waking up, going to work, and so on. A depressed person feels hopeless and damned.

Given the complexities of human mind, psychologists find it hard to point out the specific causes of depression. There is a bit of sureness, however, that proneness to depression can be inherited. People who have abnormalities in their brains’ neurotransmitters can send the trait to their kin. Although this is the case, there are several lifestyle factors and environmental causes that trigger and awaken the genetic flaw.

One of the physical causes of depression is imbalance in the brain chemistry. Note that the brain consists of chemical substances called neurotransmitters, which send and receive messages and carry out the operating procedures of the central nervous system. These same substances are said to be responsible in regulating feelings and emotions. When certain kinds of neurotransmitters lack in numbers, it is theorized that it may lead clinical depression.

A lifestyle with poor nutrition can also cause depression. Extreme lack of vitamins such as B-1, B-3, B-6, and B-12 and minerals including Magnesium, Calcium, Zinc, Iron, Manganese, and Potassium is known to develop symptoms of depression along with agitation, anxiety, and even hallucinations. People using and abusing legal and illegal drugs are very prone to the illness.

Women are more prone to depression than men, and reproductive female hormones are the culprits. During menstruation, childbirth, and pre-menopause period when hormone production is at the peak, women are more likely to develop depressive disorders.

Stressful events, whether at home or at work, can cause depression. When people are too much stressed, they secrete higher levels of cortisol, a hormone that affects the neurotransmitters in the brain and contributes in the generation of unhappy feelings. Aside from stress, life-changing events like death and loss may lead to extreme sadness and subsequently into a major depression.

Compared to other mental disorders, treatment of depression is relatively easy. Essentials of recovery include a series of talk therapy and some oral medications like a Lexapro