Depression Flashcards
What does Charlton (2000) propose?
That major depressive disorder is inappopriate sickness behaviour generated by abnormalities in cytokines.
What are the features of sickness behaviour?
Pyrexia Fatigue Somnolence Psychomotor retardaion Anhedonia Impaired cognitive functioning
What is the function of sickness behaviour
To conserve energy, minimize risk and enhance immune function to attack the invading mico-organism.
How are depression and sickness behaviour related?
Major depressive disorder resembles sickness behaviour and has been suggested to be the behavioural response to physical illness.
What are cytokines?
They appear to be the mediating factor of sickness behaviour.
What is the evidence for cytokines causing depression?
When cytokines and administered to mammals this produces a syndrome that is physically and psychologically similiar to depression.
What is the clinical evidence for cytokines causing depression?
There is substantial literatue documenting significant immune activation in depression.
What factor increases depressive feelings?
The sufferer often does not know that they ill and therefore blames themselves increasing their low mood and feelings of guilt.
What is endogenous depression/melancholia?
A rare and serious illness, less than 1% of the population have it at any one time. The illness lasts about 6-18 months and usually has a spontaneous recovery. It is dominated by low mood, inability to experience pleasure, early morning awakening and a tendency to feel worse in the morning with some improvement throughout the day. There is a high rate of suicide.
What is the evolutionary approac to depression?
It is unlikely that depression is adaptive due to the high rate of suicide and as it is rare it is unlikely due to a mismatch problem. The idea therefore is that depression is an extreme and inappropriate form of a defence mechanism.
What is the malaise theory of depression>
Malaise is the term for feeling ill such as when you have the flu. After the actual symptoms of the illness there are general feelings of sickness behaviour.
How does the body defend against illness?
Pyrexia reduces germ replication and anorexia reduces iron intake which also impairs microorganism reproduction.
Why can the defence not be sustained for long?
Because it is designed a sa temporary atack on the microorganism and cannot be sustained without harm and eventual death.
How does the conscious human interpret these symptoms?
Blames themselves. There is a mismatch between hunter gatherer conditions as there were few infectious diseases. Nowadays we have frequent acute infections, auto-immune diseases, cancers, degeneratve changes from ading and trauma and surgery.
What are some other evolutionary theories about milder depressive states?
- Evolved to stop useless or wasteful behaviour and redirect it to better use of resources.
- It is a form of submissive behaviour in conflict.
