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Depression and Bipolar Disorders (Psychological Dimensions (Some people…
Depression and Bipolar Disorders
Biological Dimensions
There is evidence that the likelihood of being diagnosed with mood disorders is increased when someone you are related to has been diagnosed with a mood disorder. These types of studies are conducted on twins; if a genetic mood disorder is found in both of the identical twins, than the gene is hereditary. Fraternal twins are different because they don't share genetic makeup. If a fraternal twin has a mood disorder, the other fraternal twin only has a 18.9% chance of also being diagnosed with that disorder; identical twins have a 66.7% chance.
It has also been found that gender could affect the chances of being diagnosed with a mood disorder. Bierut (1999) found that women were more likely than men to be diagnosed with a mood disorder.
Unlike bipolar disorders, depression can be attributed to environmental influences and doesn't completely rely on genes.
There has been evidence that there is a close relationship between depression and anxiety. It was found that the same gene attributes to both depression and anxiety. People who are diagnosed with depression are more likely to also experience anxiety, and vice versa.
There are chemicals in your body that can be attributed to feelings of happiness and when the levels of this chemical are low, depression can come into play. This chemical is dopamine and when a person isn't producing enough dopamine, medication intervention may be necessary. The endocrine system has also been studied has a factor to depression. Barlow et. al. found that patients who had diseases that directly affected the endocrine system also experienced depression. This made psychologists link the endocrine system with mood disorders like depression and anxiety.
Psychological Dimensions
Stress and trauma have been found to be a strong link to psychological disorders. Everyone experiences different stress and traumatic events so how depression is triggered is different for most people from the psychological standpoint. A person who lost their sister in a car accident that they were also involved in is more likely to experience depression. Graduating from college can cause stress in a lot of people when your future is unknown. The context of life events is important when considering depression and anxiety.
The gene-environment correlation model represents a strong relationship between stress and depression. Scientists are looking into cause and effect situations.
Even though stress and trauma have been linked to depression, most people who go through traumatic experiences do not develop mood disorders. Even though there is this link between them, it doesn't necessarily mean that a mood disorder will be developed.
One thing that every human has in common is we become anxious and depressed when we decide we have no control over the stress in our lives. When something is out of your control, it becomes difficult to cope and this can cause depression and anxiety. This is the learned helplessness theory of depression.
Some people can also become depressed because they take everything as being negative (Beck, 1967). These people see the bad in everything instead of the good and this will greatly impact their mood leading to mood disorders.
Depression is always associated with having a pessimistic outlook on life.
Social & Cultural Dimensions
Being unhappy in a marriage and bipolar disorder have been found to be closely related. About 21% of women who split from their spouse experienced severe depression; 17% of men who split from their spouse experienced severe depression.
Almost 70% of all people who are diagnosed with these disorders are women. This may be because in our society, men are encouraged to be independent and assertive while women are encouraged to be passive and sensitive. This can cause women to feel out of control and oppressed which has been found to be linked with mood disorders.
Women also tend to value intimate relationships more than men. When the relationship is distributed, this will cause the woman to feel the disruption more deeply than men (usually).
Young girls can experience depression during the onset of puberty. Also, entering a new school at any age for a girl is found to cause extreme distress.
Social support has been found to be very important when considering depression. Social factors influence whether we become depressed or not throughout our lifetime.