Depression Can Be Diagnosed With a Blood Test

crapple

Nature vs. Nurture.

Crying releases the stress hormone Cortisol in the brain, which may be onset by focusing on negative thoughts. Cognitive therapy can help those patients focus on thinking positive better than any medication (which is used to treat symptoms and not the cause). I find the medication to be a crutch, but people seem to think that it works because they can "feel" it; the high from the medication, not necessarily a change in their thought process. Relating depression to addiction, it may be possible that depressed people like being depressed because it stimulates the reward pathways in their brain that is desirable, even if the observable results are the exact opposite of how we would want to behave.

This novel blood test, which assumes that there are DNA markers that are the culprit, sounds like an easier way for Pharma companies to diagnose depression regardless if the patient ever was. One troubling aspect of this is that general patients undergoing this procedure could be misdiagnosed and treated anyway (like a control group).

Quote: "The paper’s co-authors said at the very least establishing a physiological link to depression will hopefully get patients to look at their depression as a treatable condition rather than something that’s wrong with their minds."

Are they saying that there is no documented physiological link?! Depression without that link is still treatable; of course, "treatable" is a loaded word meaning: treated with medication! That's the completely wrong attitude to have: to commission a study attempting to prove a link where none may be, and ignoring cognitive therapy options which focus on the weak mind and intend to reduce Cortisol production in favor of normal, positive function.

Recommend: Feeling Good - The New Mood Therapy by Dr. Burns.

Depression may have intermettent surge of blood will vary the normal pulsatile fashion of blood flow,also the levels of dopamine, enakhaphelines,endorphins will turn reduced than normal and will be evedinced from test on blood sample.

Vapor9

People are not depressed because they cant focus on positive thoughts. If you are truly depressed, no amount of positive thought will compete with the piling negativity. Depression is cured through acknowledgment and acceptence of he situation that caused your depression. Simple distraction only compounds the problem. Repression leads to transference, which leads to more stress. Addiction may as well be one of the steps of depression. It assists in repression and that is instant gratification. I am currently wondering if i currently am addicted to the feeling of depression itself

@vapur9
You have no idea what you're talking about. I tried that "think positive" crap for TWO YEARS, and all it did was slow things down a little. Finally I started taking medication for it, and it was like when I was little, and I got glasses for the first time. Something that I hadn't even realized was wrong got fixed, and everything came back into focus. I started thinking differently, about the world, and about myself. DEPRESSION IS A DISEASE, just like bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, or diabetes. If I had realized that earlier, I would have saved myself a lot of pain and lost time.

@ Vapur9

Also, you have no idea how insensitive that sounds to someone who has actually had to deal with depression. It's a bit like you walked into a cancer ward and said that they would all feel better if they'd just exercise more and think happy thoughts.
People always confuse clinical depression with the emotion depression. This test, if it ever gets perfected, would help fix that issue, as would renaming clinical depression unipolar disorder or something like that.

Vapur9 makes a very valid point and I agree with his comment.

--

jmadrigal12, I agree with you in that certain people, regardless of how much they try, cannot simply shake off the depressive symptoms but cognitive therapy has been proven to be effective in many of the cases, especially long-term (better than medication). If the depressed people were to just take a few pills and feel better, that will only be temporary (until they build tolerance to their meds or until they stop). Then what? Therapy doesn't simply attempt to relieve them of their depressive symptoms and sometimes this may not even be the primary goal, depending on the needs of the patient. Therapy also allows these individuals to learn to manage and cope with their depressive symptoms in addition to preparing them for future episodes.

--

Charmscale, I don't think his intention was to offend anybody. Therapy isn't for everyone, just like medications aren't for everyone. Remember that everybody is different from one another, especially with respect to subjective experiences. It is also possible that the specific type of therapy/therapist may not have been right for you. And while this may be hard to believe for some, not every disorder known to man has an organic cause like cancer.

--

While depression can be detected through physiological changes and the patient can even feel better through pharmacological methods, I feel that depression describes a subjective experience of the person. That is, the perception of being depressed cannot accurately be measured quantitatively with consistency from person to person or even from one episode to another. In addition, while blood tests may be able to screen and detect the nine biomarkers associated with the symptoms of depression, it does nothing to determine how the person is actually feeling or how they are dealing and coping with the symptoms. It is possible that even if these bio-indicators of depression came back positive, the person may be able to effectively manage symptoms, at which point I feel the medication is unnecessary.

The reason why I bring this up is that I feel that some of the professionals in the medical field appear to be rather quick to diagnose and subsequently medicate their patients. In these instances, I fear that the patient, knowingly or unknowingly, may accept these test results as a sort of "end-all, be-all" and accept (or seek) medication for quick relief rather than working on the underlying (and environmental) factors that caused the depression in the first place. I hope that both the symptoms and causes will continue to be treated, and not focus on just one aspect of depression. Keep in mind that this is not to disparage or negate the advances in the medical field but merely sharing of my opinion and concern.