Major Depressive Disorder Analysis

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Depression is a psychological disease characterized by persistent feelings of sadness over a long period of time. There are many specific symptoms that characterize depression, as well as many different types of depressive disorders. The type of depression that will be addressed in this paper will be Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) also known as Clinical Depression. MDD has specific symptoms that relate to it, and they can interfere with a person’s ability to function properly on daily tasks. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V (DSM-V) some of the symptoms of MDD include persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" feelings, feelings of hopelessness or pessimism, feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness, irritability, and restlessness. …show more content…

In a recent study conducted by researchers at Brighman Young University, researchers found that depression interferes with a person’s ability to correctly differentiate experiences they’ve had previously. Participants in this study who had depression were not able to undergo pattern separation within the experiment. This may be due to depression causing a decrease in the amount of growth factors produced in the hippocampus, therefore causing participants with depressive disorders to not be able to recall/differentiate things (Whiteman, 2013). In another study, measuring hippocampal volume in participants with depression compared to controls, showed results supporting the negative correlation between memory and depression. Participants who had depression had less volume in their hippocampal regions than those who were not depressed, this goes on to suggest that depression does have adverse effects on memory …show more content…

All of these factors play an important role when one is depressed—the presence, or lack of, of a certain molecule or hormone can greatly affect a person. This in turn, can have long-term negative effect on our brain, over long periods of time. One of the limitations of the study was—if a patient diagnosed with depression already had a markedly reduced hippocampal region, from birth—how would this patient compare to other depressed, and non-depressed patients? The study did address the possibility of there being a pre-existing condition, where a patient would have a reduced hippocampus, which may place the patient at a higher risk for depression. (Bremner,

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