Depression alone is a difficult illness to deal with but sometimes it comes coupled with anxiety which causes more symptoms and makes the depression harder to treat. While depression and anxiety are two different mental disorders, they can coexist in the same way a virus and bacteria can coexist and sometimes combine. It is believed that about 60% of people who suffer from depression also have anxiety and about 50% of all people who suffer from anxiety also have depressive illnesses. The pair of illnesses together significantly increase the risk of complications, the worst of which is suicide.
Depression Anxiety and Anxiety Depression
Researchers have reached the conclusion that anxiety and depression are not necessarily two distinct disorders apart from one another, but that they may be two facets of a single disorder. The risk factors and likelihood of being depressed or suffering an anxiety disorder are the same genetically and have similar catalysts; even the neurobiology of the disorders is similar. Various stressors in life can cause anxiety or depression so the idea of depression anxiety or anxiety depression is not too outlandish in the grand scheme of depression and anxiety disorders. Some researchers even believe that anxiety is a lead-in to depression; that the fears and stresses of anxiety can lead to a point where the mind simply shuts off the flow of normal information and leads to depression when the mind can no longer handle the stresses.
Causes of Anxiety and Depression Disorders
The root cause of these disorders seems to be the same thing, the hyperactivity of the body’s system designed to respond to stress. The fear section of the brain is usually the main part affected which increases the response the body has to minimal stimuli. The anxiety becomes increasingly greater to the point that the body and other areas of the brain are affected and leads to depression or anxiety depression. Age also seems to be a factor because studies show that people who experience anxiety for the first time after age 40 seldom, if ever, experience depression.
Treating the Disorders
For years doctors have been treating depression and anxiety as two separate disorders and prescribing different medications for each. This method may be the reason for some drugs being ineffective in treating the disorder for which it was prescribed. Recently, doctors have been trying out drug therapies to treat the two as a combined disorder and are finding that they have improved results in early studies.
Because people tend to avoid treatment with either anxiety or depression, patients tend to avoid situations that require them to confront the disorder and can lack social skills that would make them fit in with the greater population. They often have to be coached in social skills and learn later in life how to handle various situations, usually after having some form of psychotherapy. Most of the time anxiety is treated first because the anxiety is often a catalyst for depression. In this case, when the anxiety is gone so is the depression. Research into these two as a single disorder is ongoing and promising.
