Depression

You should delve further into that statement. The human body is a powerful machine and does have the power to cure lots of things we tend to believe it can't. We are very quick to just get a doctor and some medication and hope for the best, but it does not always work that way. If you can cause your immune system to weaken by being angry, jealous, and depressed all the time, you can also strengthen it using "self-help" as well. How much of your brain do you actually use? Do you find it that hard to believe that the body possesses healing powers not tapped in to by most people?

And while the majority of us probably do think Tom Tom is off his rocker, did you ever stop to think that maybe the man has a reached a state of enlightenment that most of us have not? While scientology maybe considered "out there" compared to our traditionally held beliefs, in reality, it is no more crazy than the more commonly accepted beliefs in religions across the world. Maybe they are on to something, Tom does not seem all that depressed to me...

Skull Mason, darling...

The articles you referenced made conclusions that were not made by the scientists who conducted the study. Here is the link to the actual study.

Traumatic Brain Injury and Schizophrenia in Members of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Pedigrees

Here is the conclusion the actual scientists who wrote the study made:

CONCLUSIONS: Members of the schizophrenia pedigrees, even those without a schizophrenia diagnosis, had greater exposure to traumatic brain injury compared to members of the bipolar disorder pedigrees. Within the schizophrenia pedigrees, traumatic brain injury was associated with a greater risk of schizophrenia, consistent with synergistic effects between genetic vulnerability for schizophrenia and traumatic brain injury. Posttraumatic-brain-injury schizophrenia in multiplex schizophrenia pedigrees does not appear to be a phenocopy of the genetic disorder.

So basically what this says is that the study was done with almost 600 people who had a genetic predisposition to developing Schizophrenia because they had a first degree relative who had Schizophrenia. Here are the results:

RESULTS: Rates of traumatic brain injury were significantly higher for those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression than for those with no mental illness. However, multivariate analysis of within-pedigree data showed that mental illness was related to traumatic brain injury only in the schizophrenia pedigrees. Independent of diagnoses, family members of those with schizophrenia were more likely to have had traumatic brain injury than were members of the bipolar disorder pedigrees. The members of the schizophrenia pedigrees also failed to show the gender difference for traumatic brain injury (more common in men than in women) that was expected and was present in the bipolar disorder pedigrees. Subjects with a schizophrenia diagnosis who were members of the bipolar disorder pedigrees (and thus had less genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia) were less likely to have had traumatic brain injury (4.5%) than were subjects with schizophrenia who were members of the schizophrenia pedigrees (and who had greater genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia) (19.6%).


Last Paragraph of the discussion:

One might hypothesize that the severity of traumatic brain injury would be associated with greater risk for disease. However, research in this area has not generally found outcome after brain injury to be explained by severity of the injury (9, 12). For this study as well, the use of alternate definitions of traumatic brain injury exposure based on the presence or duration of loss of consciousness did not alter the association of traumatic brain injury with the psychiatric conditions. We did not categorize the severity of the psychiatric conditions of individual subjects, so it is possible that the severity of head injury is related to course, treatment response, or functional outcome among those with particular diagnoses, rather than the development of the illness per se.

So the conclusions one can draw from this study is that in those with a genetic predisposition to Schizophrenia show a greater risk of having a brain injury. From this study one cannot draw the conclusion that brain injury was the cause of the Schizophrenia. They did show that those with genetic predisposition to Bipolar Disorder had a lower incidence of brain injury. This can suggest that those who have genetic markers for Schizophrenia may have an increased risk of experiencing head trauma resulting in brain injury. Therefore one could argue just as easily that the genetic predisposition to develop Schizophrenia caused an increase in risk of head trauma leading to brain injury.

The study cannot claim that brain injury alone causes Schizophrenia of even Bipolar Disorder. The study shows that brain injury may possibly be a contributing factor.

Thinking positive thoughts isn't going to release sulfuric acid and heavy metals from my body. My immune system stays in over-drive trying to rid my body of the toxins I absorbed. I have undergone natural care to rid my body of them, and it helped some. The damage from the poisoning was great.

I though about not answering for a while because I am not sure if this is turning into a battle of the egos or a true debate on the subject matter, but the only thing that I see you can conclude from your study high lighted above is that yes, you can bump your head and develop schizophrenia, which is exactly what I posted before.

Do you really mean that people who have a predisposed condition in their brain for schizophrenia are more likely to crash their car into a tree, or go smash their head against the wall and cause a brain injury? So using that logic do you think that those people who have a predisposition towards lung cancer are more likely to smoke cigarettes habitually?

There may be underlying factors and a previous disposition for it somewhere in the brain which is exacerbated through TBI, or there may not be. But that is with all diseases as well. Some people smoke cigarettes and develop cancer, some don't. Want to guess what group was more predisposed to it? But do you think if that group never smoked a cigarette that some of them may never have developed cancer?

Regardless of if it is the trigger for, or the mechanism driving the onset of the disease, makes no difference; TBI can somehow be related to the onset of many mental illnesses. And whether those illnesses are brought about "naturally" or through a traumatic brain injury, they are still the same; a mental illness.

When I was in college at Johns Hopkins studying brain injuries, it was pretty much accepted belief there that brain injuries could lead to mental illness. In fact, it was very widely accepted. I just did a quick google search and found a couple links. I am sure if I continued to dig further I could find plenty more, but I did all that in college. The bottom line is, you can not rule it out, which is what you did in your initial response.

That question I'm often struggling with. How much is too much?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpeedoGuy That question I'm often struggling with. How much is too much?

I would say that if you haven't had some major life altering event or death of a loved one, then if the sad/bad/depressed feeling doesn't go away within 6-8 weeks you should seek professional help.

Sometimes the life altering event can kick in a condition to which the individuals is predisposed.

Yes Naughty, that's very true. And they've done studies comparing people who have clinical depression and who are grieving a loss. What they have found is that both sets of subjects present very similarly. What this means is that there is a natural process that goes with depression that is common to all of us. What makes a person different who experiences clinical depression? The theory goes that the person with clinical depression has the predisposition to develop the mental illness of depression when an external stimulus (a death, physical trauma, emotional trauma, etc.) causes a change in the body, mind, soul, spirit... Or sometimes there is no external stimulus, and it's endogenous.

Mental illness's roots and causes is still shrouded in mystery for the most part. We can point to factors that seem to be common in people who develop certain mental illnesses. We can't definitively with 100% certainty always determine the root cause of mental illness.

I think going back to the OP, because that's who is important here in this thread, if you feel you might be depressed it is always best to be evaluated by a professional who is experienced in working with people who have suffered from depression.

I remember that years ago an article was published on the front of USA TODAY that dealt with the brain patterns of people who had been molested as children. It said that the study showed that sexual assault was so traumatic to children that their brain wave patterns changed. Parts of their brain that were normally inactive kicked into over-drive, and they never went back to inactive. The children often developed depression, real physical illness, and never went back to normal brain patterns again.

Having been molested over 300 times, I can't help but wonder if my brain wave patterns resemble the light show on microsoft media player.

Can you be depressed if you feel vibrant and full of health?

Maybe that is why very few athletes are prone to depression.

I always wonder why sadness and depression are so feared and avoided in our society when the truth of the matter is that it is just another human emotion that everybody experiences to one degree to another. I don't think there is anything wrong with feeling sad and depressed when you are sad and depressed. We conditioned to think it's a bad thing or sickness when it is just human nature. I just think some people are better at dealing with it than others and coping is a learned skill. Many people just don't know themselves well enough to deal with it effectively. It is an intelligence few people cultivate.

It depends on the cause of the depression. Sometimes, life sucks a big one. That would make a person depressed. Other times, it's a health problem causing the depression, and that needs attention.