Week 48: Troublemaker

 

Depression has been a troublemaker in the generations directly before and after mine.  I started wondering how common depression might be in the general population.

From what I can find, it seems that about 1 out every 10 people in the United States will experience major depressive disorder sometime in their life and for some reason, twice as many women as men are affected.  I wondered what part genes might play in causing depression.  

In an article titled "Depression and Genetics" on a Stanford University website, I learned that scientists study patterns of illness in families to estimate what percentage of their cause is due to genes.  One method used is to find pairs of twins to see how common it might be for just one of the pair to have depressive disorder versus both of the pair to be affected.  Studies have found that anxiety and depression are partly hereditary since identical twins (who share 100% of their genes) are more likely to have both disorders when compared to pairs of fraternal twins (who share 50% of their genes).  As of now, no single gene has been identified as the cause.  It may be that combinations of different genes inherited from parents that affect a person's chance of being depressed.  Even if genetics are partly the cause, there are other factors like environment, lifestyle, and personal experiences to be considered.

Whatever the cause, depression is a tough disorder.  In my maternal line alone there have been:

• three out of four of my mom and her siblings
• two out of three of me and my siblings
• three out of three of my children

Luckily for my generation, my offspring, and for some in the previous generation, there have been anti-depressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) to help. During the 18th and 19th centuries, common treatments were diet changes, enemas, water immersion, and even a spinning stool to put the brain back into a correct position.  In the 20th century, electroconvulsive therapy was sometimes applied to the scalp to induce a seizure as treatment.  Finally, in the 1950s doctors noticed that a tuberculosis medication seemed to be effective in treating some depression patients.  In the 1980s and 90s SSRIs began to be developed.  

There's no way for me to tell from looking at my family tree to tell which of my early ancestors may have had depression disorder, but it must have been immensely difficult to live with those feelings without having effective treatment or understanding of them.