Loss, Trauma, Grief and Masked Depression in Men
Posted By Kelly On Monday, August 8th 2011 under: Depression
Much obviously remains to be learned (and a great deal will doubtless continue to be a mystery, owing to the disease's idiopathic nature, its constant interchangeability of factors), but certainly one psychological element has been established beyond reasonable doubt, and that is the concept of loss. Loss in all of its manifestations is the touchstone of depression — in the progress of the disease and, most likely, in its origin.
William ... Read More
Normative Loss Across The Life Span
Posted By Kelly On Monday, August 8th 2011 under: Depression
A number of psychoanalytically informed theorists,have pointed out the gender-bifurcated impact of our culture's child-rearing practices. In these conceptualizations, little boys must traverse an emotionally challenging and problematic developmental trajectory. This trajectory requires them to prematurely seek connection outside the maternal emotional holding environment in order to conform to our culture's prevailing conceptions of masculinity. For little girls, this cultural script is played out developmentally via connection to the mother, ... Read More
Trauma And Depression
Posted By Kelly On Monday, August 8th 2011 under: Depression
Trauma involves a severe disturbance of an individual's mental and emotional life through a painfully inflicted experience or series of experiences from outside of oneself. Psychologists have used the term "trauma" to describe the impact of child abuse, sexual abuse, combat, violence, and physical accidents, among other life events. Although a number of scientists believe that early traumatic experiences are likely to contribute to depression in later life, experimental findings ... Read More
Grief and Depression
Posted By Kelly On Monday, August 8th 2011 under: Depression
Grief is defined as the physical and emotional state and the behaviors that accompany the permanent loss of a significant other. Much of the research literature on men and grief has focused on men who have recently become widowed or friends and partners of men who have died from the AIDS epidemic. For men raised in American culture, there is little sanction to outwardly grieve losses with tears or overt ... Read More
Manifestations Of Covert Depression In Men
Posted By Kelly On Monday, August 8th 2011 under: Depression
Biopsychosocial models of depression emphasize a complex interplay of biological and genetic vulnerability, psychological mechanisms, and behavioral tendencies shaped by social and cultural norms. Within this framework, many have speculated that mood disorders are frequently masked by various physical and behavioral phenomena. Alexithymia, literally, "without words," is thought to be related to the masking of mood difficulties that are unable to be expressed via language. Such masking, termed "masked depression," ... Read More
Marital Functioning and Depression
Posted By Kelly On Thursday, May 26th 2011 under: Depression
Researchers have focused specifically on the quality of the marital and romantic relationships of depressed individuals to better understand the role of interpersonal factors in the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of depressive symptoms. This focus is warranted for several reasons. First, there is converging evidence for a robust cross-sectional association of marital distress and depression across different populations (e.g., clinical and subthreshold depression) and different assessment methods (e.g., self-report vs. ... Read More
Maltreatment and Depression
Posted By Kelly On Thursday, May 26th 2011 under: Depression
Childhood maltreatment, including physical abuse, emotional maltreatment, sexual abuse, and neglect, has long been implicated in the development of depression in children, adolescents, and adults. Child maltreatment places individuals at markedly elevated risk for the development of major depressive disorder, depressive symptomatology, and dysthymia. Child maltreatment has also been related to higher likelihood of a relapse after an initial remission of depression. Studies have consistently found high prevalence rates of ... Read More
Loss
Posted By Kelly On Thursday, May 26th 2011 under: Depression
The notion that painful life experience is critically linked with depressive illness is in no way new. On the one hand within orthodox psychiatry, well before World War II, despite acknowledgment that many depressions were endogenous (and thus presumed biological), there was also the accepted notion that just as many were reactive to circumstances. On the other hand, Freud's insights in his "Mourning and Melancholia" (1971) show how the experience ... Read More
Intrusive Memory
Posted By Kelly On Wednesday, May 25th 2011 under: Depression
Many patients with depression, like those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), experience unwanted memories of one or more significant events in their lives that intrude frequently into their minds. These memories are vivid, distressing, absorbing, and associated with intense negative emotions. Most research has concerned unipolar depression, but recent research suggests intrusive memories are also a feature of bipolar disorder. In studies to date, the proportion of depressed unipolar patients ... Read More
Interpersonal Psychotherapy
Posted By Kelly On Wednesday, May 25th 2011 under: Medical Practice
Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is a time-limited psychotherapy specified in a manual and tested in numerous clinical trials that have established its efficacy. Initially developed for adult patients with depression, it has been adapted for adolescents and the elderly with depression, medical patients, and pregnant and postpartum depressed women, and for dysthymia and bipolar depression. It has been tested as acute and as maintenance treatment for depression. The most exciting recent ... Read More