Depression in Mom = Depression in Baby and Toddler?
Think a baby is too young to be depressed? Think a again. A new study out of the University of Montreal in Quebec suggests a strong link between depression in mothers and anxiety and depression in infants and toddlers:
The longitudinal study of 1759 children, ranging in age from 5 months to 5 years, found that 15% of study participants had unduly high symptoms of depression and anxiety and that these children were more likely to have mothers with a history of depression. The study also found that difficult temperament at 5 months was the most important predictor of depression and anxiety in children.
“As early as the first year of life, there are indications that some children have more risks than others of developing high levels of depression and anxiety. We also found that these symptoms increase in frequency during the first 5 years of life,” one of the authors, Sylvana Côté, PhD, from the Université de Montréal in Quebec, told Medscape Psychiatry.
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The Evolutionary Origins of Depression
Psychologists Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thompson, Jr. argue that depression may be an evolutionary advantage developed early in human history. What could be good about depression?
Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.
This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.
Link via Instapundit
Photo credit: Guillermo Perales Gonzalez
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"Poor Man's Meal" - a Depression-era recipe
[YouTube - Link]
91-year old Claire shows how she cooked meals during the Great Depression. Nothing special – potatoes and hot dogs – but her commentary does make today’s problems seem less intense.
"I had to quit high school because we couldn’t afford socks…we couldn’t afford anything to wear."
– via consumerist
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5 Celebrities With Depression
Being a depression sufferer myself, I find it interesting and inspiring to see people deal with their chronic depression. I love seeing what people can do with their lives, despite the agonizing pain they have had to cope with. While we probably all know about Heath Ledger and Kurt Cobain, there are plenty of surprising celebrities with depression, like Harrison Ford. A few others you may not have know about include the five stars below.
Jim Carrey
In an interview during 60 Minutes, Mr. Carrey revealed that the inspiration behind his funny-man antics was “desperation.” Like many famous comics, Carrey channeled his emotional pain and scarring into humor. The laughter and attention brought from audiences helps ease the depression comedians feel and soothes their pain.
Carrey’s attention getting antics started when he tried to entertain his sick mother. To get her spirits up, he’d do anything from impressions to rolling down the stairs. When he was young, he grasped on to an optimistic dream of making it big. In 1987, he wrote himself a check for ten million dollars “for acting services rendered.” As it turns out, the check was a massive underestimate of what he ended up making when he cashed the check 1995. As financial worries lessened, so did his depression symptoms. He has since learned to better cope with his sadness and he says the valleys and peaks have gradually smoothed out a bit. While he used to take Prozac to help stabilize his mood, he now focuses on treatment through spirituality and clean living.
Sources: one, two & three Photo by IBWK [Flickr]
Rodney Dangerfield
“If a really good comedian isn’t depressed,” says Bob Saget, “something’s wrong.” Rodney Dangerfield is no exception to this rule. Around the end of his life, he attended regular therapy sessions with his psychiatrist and took around 137 prescription drugs a day, including anti-depressants and Valium.
Rodney’s father abandoned the family when he was a child and he was instead raised by a cold-hearted mother.
He found an outlet in writing jokes, and even remembers the first one. At age 4, Dangerfield finished dinner and whined, “I’m still hungry.”
“You’ve had sufficient,” replied his mom.
“But,” said Rodney, “I didn’t even have any fish.”
He has had wild mood swings throughout his career and tried to escape the pain and suffering in every way imaginable, including prostitutes and drugs. His wife helped pull him through to the end, but he still experienced these problems until the end of his days.
Source Photo by Breakfast For Dinner [Flickr]
J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling will be the first to tell you about the hardships of being a single parent. In fact, in her darkest hour, she strongly contemplated suicide while suffering from a massive bout of depression. She missed her ex-husband and worried about finances, that’s when the dark thoughts started coming out. Fortunately, her daughter was there to inspire her to seek treatment:
“Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted,” said Rowling. “The thing that made me go for help . . . was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn’t right, this can’t be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state.”
Rowling opted too treat her depression with cognitive therapy rather than anti-depressants. This type of therapy seeks to cure the emotional problem, rather than treating it. The therapy involves a series of counseling sessions providing the sufferer with the mental tools to cope with their emotions. Rowling has been very forthright about her disorder in the hope she can help remove the stigma associated with mental illnesses.
Owen Wilson
Many people already know about Owen Wilson’s depression. After all, his attempted suicide took over all the tabloid headlines at their local grocery stores two years ago. But, you may still be wondering why.
The fact is, like millions of other Americans, Wilson is clinically depressed and will be throughout his lifetime. He has been battling depression by taking anti-depressants for years, however, breaking up with Kate Hudson pushed him beyond the effects of his medication and made him feel hopeless. While it has been debated whether Wilson was taking cocaine or heroin around this time, the fact is that either way, a major life change can dramatically endanger a depression sufferer.
Sources: one & two Photo by Smellmoregloves’ [Flickr]
Brooke Shields
Mrs. Shields is a perfect example of how beauty does not equal happiness. While not a lifelong depression sufferer, she has been very vocal about her experience with postpartum depression, an illness experienced by 13% of pregnant women and new mothers. Her book “Down Came The Rain” describes her experiences in detail.
Like many postpartum depression sufferers, she experienced a detachment from her baby daughter and self-destructive thoughts. At her lowest point, Brooke says she wanted to jump out of a window and throw the baby against a wall. Brooke began taking Paxil to cope with her emotions and eventually recovered. She now has a very close relationship with her daughter.
After being criticized by Tom Cruise for her use of anti-depressants, Brooke published an essay in the “New York Times” detailing the need for global recognition of postpartum depression and the use of anti-depressants for treatment.
Source Photo by WatchWithKristin [Flickr]
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Depressed, Sick, and Fat? Blame Your Friends!
Image: J Fowler and N Christakis/New England Journal of Medicine/BMJ
Research by medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis and colleague at the Harvard Medical School in Boston revealed how oher people’s happiness, depression, and obesity can affect you:
Recent research shows that our moods are far more strongly influenced by those around us than we tend to think. Not only that, we are also beholden to the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends – people three degrees of separation away from us who we have never met, but whose disposition can pass through our social network like a virus.
Indeed, it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.
At first sight, the idea that we can catch the moods, habits and state of health not only of those around us, but also those we do not even know seems alarming. It implies that rather than being in charge of where we are going in life, we are little more than back-seat drivers, since most social influence operates at a subconscious level.
Previously on Neatorama: 14 Habits That Make You Fat (which also noted the study above)
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