Depression can be debilitating and it can cause a number of serious complications, affecting both mental and physical health.
Suicide, poor nutrition, substance abuse, weight changes, and more are possible and typical consequences of untreated depression. But this illness can be treated, and often residential treatment is the best solution for managing symptoms and reversing damage to the body and brain. Major depression, or major depressive disorder, is a mood disorder and mental illness that causes significantly and persistently low moods.
Some of the key symptoms and signs of depression are:. You may be diagnosed with depression if you have some of these symptoms for a couple weeks or longer, if they are severe enough to disrupt your normal functioning, and if they cannot be explained by substance abuse, medications, or an illness. No one knows for sure what causes depression, but researchers have determined that it is definitely a disorder that has biological underpinnings and that the chemistry of the brain plays a big role.
Depression is much more than just a brain disorder. It causes physical symptoms and can cause lasting damage to the body because of both direct effects and indirect complications of living with this mental illness. For instance, depression can change your appetite. It may trigger you to eat less and lose an unhealthy amount of weight. Or it can cause you to eat more, leading to weight gain and associated health conditions.
You may also experience chronic pain as a result of depression. Unexplained aches and pains, like headaches, back pain, or joint tenderness, can be triggered by depression. Although not fully understood, it may be that depression makes you less tolerant of pain, so that everything just hurts more. Living with depression puts you at risk for serious physical health conditions, including heart disease and stroke. The reason for this may be that depression triggers an overproduction of clotting factors and variation in heart rate.
These are both factors that can lead to a heart attack or stroke. Gastrointestinal distress is a potential complication of depression. There are important receptors in the gut and an ecosystem of bacteria, which when out of whack can affect mood. If you are depressed, you may experience stomach aches, indigestion, nausea, cramps, or bloating. Fatigue is a common symptom of depression, and one of the most consistent physical consequences of this mental illness.
This lack of energy is beyond normal tiredness. Just getting out of bed in the morning can feel insurmountable. One of the most important reasons to choose residential care for depression treatment is that it gives you the space, the time, and the opportunity to truly focus on healing. There are no distractions of home, work, and other responsibilities, only a safe place to get better.
The damage that depression has done to your brain and body can be slowed, stopped, and even reversed with good care. The most effective treatment for depression is a combination of therapy and medications, both of which take time to work. This is another reason that residential treatment is a smart choice for depression care.
Anxiety can make you feel stressed, threatened, and fearful and can lead you to avoid certain situations, people, and places. Depression can make you feel worthless and hopeless and can leave you bedridden or battling suicidal thoughts.
Luckily, a combination of therapy and medication can help treat anxiety and depression. But if left untreated, anxiety and depression can damage the brain. This heightened level of anxiety can make your brain hyperactive to threats. Constantly on the lookout for danger, the anxious brain struggles to reason logically. Unable to problem solve as it should, the anxious brain learns to hold onto past memories that involved stress, threats, and danger. Unfortunately, though, these memories are often based on anxiety-based impulsive responses, leading the brain to rely on its fight or flight mode for everyday situations.
As anxiety starts to overwhelm your life, you may start to experience symptoms that can include:. But without treatment, anxiety disorders can alter the way the brain functions and even change its physical appearance.
While the anxious brain cries wolf, the depressed brain experiences a kind of chemically-induced vertigo. Your brain has a team of three major neurotransmitters that help regulate your mood: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
When these chemical messengers work together, they change your mood based on the situations and circumstances you experience. Depression disrupts this process, upsetting the careful balance of all three chemical messengers. When depression starts to overwhelm the brain, neurotransmitters levels either increase excessively or decrease substantially. You can picture a sudden influx of neurotransmitters as frustrated chemical messengers storming through the brain.
Whether depression causes your brain to produce too many or too few neurotransmitters, if left untreated, depression, like anxiety, can harm the brain.
Without treatment, depression and anxiety disorders can cause measurable changes in key areas of your brain. Brain imaging tests, such as MRIs, show that people living with depression and anxiety disorders have abnormalities in areas of the brain responsible for cognitive functions like problem-solving, memory, and planning and executing activities.
Untreated anxiety and depression can actually shrink regions of the brain, including:. Untreated depression can also inflame the brain. As a result, studies show that the three areas that are most affected are the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. Also known as the memory center, the hippocampus is responsible for producing your stress hormone, cortisol.
Excessive release of cortisol, either from high-anxiety situations or from chemical imbalances , can cause neurons to shrink. This reaction can be linked to symptoms of major depression such as memory loss and troubles concentrating. Your amygdala decides whether you feel pleasure or fear in result to situations.
The excessive release of cortisol due to depression causes the amygdala to become hyperactive and enlarged. This results in the release of unnecessary chemicals and hormones, which cause further complications. Hyperactivity in the amygdala is also responsible for any disruptions in your sleep pattern. It regulates emotions, helps you make decisions, and assists in the formation of memories. When the hippocampus releases extra cortisol, the prefrontal cortex shrinks as a result. You can work with a psychologist, get on medication, or you can use neurofeedback to train your brain back to a healthier, happier state.
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