Depression Considered "Contagious"
New Posters: Please acquaint yourself with this thread (yes, that means reading it) before jumping in. Thank you. ;)
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Something to consider a) if you need help, b) in advance of the winter holiday season, and c) before you take your next public emotional dump. ;)
Is Depression Contagious?
Copyright 2003, Ellen McGrath, Psychology Today
Entire families can be depressed together and not even know it. But healthy communication can prevent you and your loved ones from getting down.
Like the flu, depression is a highly contagious disorder that can be transmitted socially. It is especially apt to take up residence in a household, jumping from one family member to others. And just as individuals can be depressed, so can whole families, often without their awareness.
Depression in a family can suck up all the energy of a household, turning a home into a black hole of swirling negative emotions. Usually, such depression is disguised as physical illness or a general air of irritability and negativity. Family members withdraw into their own spaces, in the protective custody of a TV or computer. And pessimism, sarcasm or silence becomes the dominant style of family communications.
Families can prevent depression from taking up permanent residence and commandeering their interaction patterns by:
* Being on the lookout for signs of depression in a family member.
The sooner you spot it, the faster you can help the individual out of it and contain the risk to others. In young children, it may take the form of defiant behavior but not overt sadness. In school age children, depression can be underachievement and withdrawal from school and social activities. In teens, it is often disguised in smoking, drinking or drug use, in older people as lack of appetite for food or life.
* Developing skills around positive thinking and positive talking in the household.
Families often inherit a negative thinking style that carries the germ of depression. Typically it is a legacy passed from one generation to the next, a pattern of pessimism invoked to protect loved ones from disappointment or stress. But in fact, negative thinking patterns do just the opposite, eroding the mental health of all exposed.
When Dad consistently expresses his disappointment in Josh for bringing home a B minus in chemistry although all the other grades are As, he is exhibiting a kind of cognitive distortion that children learn to deploy on themselves—a mental filtering that screens out positive experience from consideration.
Or perhaps the father envisions catastrophe, seeing such grades as foreclosing the possibility of a top college, thus dooming his son's future. It is their repetition over time that gives these events power to shape a person's belief system.
Instead, set up guidelines for healthy communication. Make everyone aware of the common types of distortions:
* Catastrophizing, exaggerating the harmful effects of a disappointing event
* Personalizing, seeing yourself or your child as the cause of a disappointing outcome
* All-or-nothing thinking, reducing complexities to absolutes, like knowing you're not perfect but seeing yourself as a loser
* Overgeneralizing, interpreting one disappointment as part of an inescapable pattern
* Filtering, focusing on negative aspects of an experience while ignoring the positive side
Make an agreement among family members to be habit breakers for each other (at home) when someone slips into negative thinking. Remind each other and support each other.
* Make sure that your family has an ongoing supply of positive experiences and a bank of them to call on when times get rough. Negative experiences carry so much psychological weight that positive experiences need to seriously outnumber negative ones. A ratio of 2 to 1 is realistic when you start to build positive interactions, and 5 to 1 is the long term goal.
Inventory positive and negative interactions as a family. When you eat breakfast together, how does it go? Is it on balance a positive or negative experience? What action plan does the family need to use to build more positive experience and lessen the negative? For example, encourage activities in which family members include each other in various combinations. Just going to the movies together can be a highly positive shared event.
* Get together often to survey emotional needs for the next week. Ask, what do you need to make this work for you?
That way challenges can be anticipated and met with minimal stress on the whole family. What emotional needs do family members have in order to get done what is on their schedule? If Sara has a big test on Friday, then one parent might plan to be especially available on Thursday evening for support.
Checking in on people's well-being and not just on their activity schedule contributes to a sense of connectedness that is a major buffer against depression at every stage of life. Paying as much attention to family feelings as family activities is one of the best protections you can use to combat family depression.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Something to consider a) if you need help, b) in advance of the winter holiday season, and c) before you take your next public emotional dump. ;)
Is Depression Contagious?
Copyright 2003, Ellen McGrath, Psychology Today
Entire families can be depressed together and not even know it. But healthy communication can prevent you and your loved ones from getting down.
Like the flu, depression is a highly contagious disorder that can be transmitted socially. It is especially apt to take up residence in a household, jumping from one family member to others. And just as individuals can be depressed, so can whole families, often without their awareness.
Depression in a family can suck up all the energy of a household, turning a home into a black hole of swirling negative emotions. Usually, such depression is disguised as physical illness or a general air of irritability and negativity. Family members withdraw into their own spaces, in the protective custody of a TV or computer. And pessimism, sarcasm or silence becomes the dominant style of family communications.
Families can prevent depression from taking up permanent residence and commandeering their interaction patterns by:
* Being on the lookout for signs of depression in a family member.
The sooner you spot it, the faster you can help the individual out of it and contain the risk to others. In young children, it may take the form of defiant behavior but not overt sadness. In school age children, depression can be underachievement and withdrawal from school and social activities. In teens, it is often disguised in smoking, drinking or drug use, in older people as lack of appetite for food or life.
* Developing skills around positive thinking and positive talking in the household.
Families often inherit a negative thinking style that carries the germ of depression. Typically it is a legacy passed from one generation to the next, a pattern of pessimism invoked to protect loved ones from disappointment or stress. But in fact, negative thinking patterns do just the opposite, eroding the mental health of all exposed.
When Dad consistently expresses his disappointment in Josh for bringing home a B minus in chemistry although all the other grades are As, he is exhibiting a kind of cognitive distortion that children learn to deploy on themselves—a mental filtering that screens out positive experience from consideration.
Or perhaps the father envisions catastrophe, seeing such grades as foreclosing the possibility of a top college, thus dooming his son's future. It is their repetition over time that gives these events power to shape a person's belief system.
Instead, set up guidelines for healthy communication. Make everyone aware of the common types of distortions:
* Catastrophizing, exaggerating the harmful effects of a disappointing event
* Personalizing, seeing yourself or your child as the cause of a disappointing outcome
* All-or-nothing thinking, reducing complexities to absolutes, like knowing you're not perfect but seeing yourself as a loser
* Overgeneralizing, interpreting one disappointment as part of an inescapable pattern
* Filtering, focusing on negative aspects of an experience while ignoring the positive side
Make an agreement among family members to be habit breakers for each other (at home) when someone slips into negative thinking. Remind each other and support each other.
* Make sure that your family has an ongoing supply of positive experiences and a bank of them to call on when times get rough. Negative experiences carry so much psychological weight that positive experiences need to seriously outnumber negative ones. A ratio of 2 to 1 is realistic when you start to build positive interactions, and 5 to 1 is the long term goal.
Inventory positive and negative interactions as a family. When you eat breakfast together, how does it go? Is it on balance a positive or negative experience? What action plan does the family need to use to build more positive experience and lessen the negative? For example, encourage activities in which family members include each other in various combinations. Just going to the movies together can be a highly positive shared event.
* Get together often to survey emotional needs for the next week. Ask, what do you need to make this work for you?
That way challenges can be anticipated and met with minimal stress on the whole family. What emotional needs do family members have in order to get done what is on their schedule? If Sara has a big test on Friday, then one parent might plan to be especially available on Thursday evening for support.
Checking in on people's well-being and not just on their activity schedule contributes to a sense of connectedness that is a major buffer against depression at every stage of life. Paying as much attention to family feelings as family activities is one of the best protections you can use to combat family depression.
Tags: affective disorders, awareness, depression, mental health, support
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Arachneh on -
Related feature:
Depression May Be Contagious, Experts Say: An Individual's Mood May Affect That of Loved Ones
By RADHA CHITALE
ABC Medical Unit
Copyright 2008, ABC News
Ron and Carol Rossetti had a storybook romance. The two were high school sweethearts, went to prom together and married after college.
"He was like the fun in my life," Carol Rossetti recalled. "But had I known the ride I was going to be in for, I'm not sure I would have signed up for it."
Not too long after they were married, Ron would get into terrible tempers, Carol recalled, or become very depressed. Later on, as his business grew more successful, Ron would spend money lavishly on cars: A Lotus, a Viper, a Porsche, a Hummer.
Ron Rossetti's erratic behavior took a toll on his wife. "I was just really unhappy," Carol said. "I was wanting to find the answer without giving up the marriage."
Carol Rossetti's discontent may be no surprise to many people whose spouses suffer from mood disorders. Ron was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his late 30s, and while the news explained some of his behaviors and brought Carol a measure of relief, his wife Carol was in an unusual and vulnerable position.
Spouses are at high risk for depression when one party has a clinical disorder like depression or bipolar disorder, because they spend a large amount of time with them and are emotionally invested in their well-being.
"Was she depressed? Absolutely," Ron said. "Look what she had for a husband. … Was it a Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?"
Some studies show that if one spouse is depressed, the other can become depressed, and that up to 40 percent of people whose spouses have bipolar disorder get clinical depression. That's according to Dr. Igor Galynker, director of the Family Center for Bipolar Disorder at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and professor of clinical psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Natural Born Mimics
"We can mimic other people's facial expressions," Galynker said. "When we mimic other people's facial expressions, we also can adopt the mood that these people are in. It affects us, even on a superficial level."
But such mimicry can go beyond the superficial and become emotional. Studies in which monitors track brain activity while a subject is shown smiling or frowning faces show that the areas associated with happy or sad emotions are active when the subject is presented with the corresponding face.
This ability to tune in to other people's feelings, or empathize, can be useful, but it can also get a person in trouble if they are around someone who has depression.
"If a genetic predisposition exists, and a person is surrounded by people with a behavior, that may give rise to or create an environment that would fertilize that behavior," said Steven Lappen, a writer and frequent public speaker who has bipolar disorder.
Lappen, 58, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 19 and said his manic and depressive episodes during his 20-year marriage made his wife feel invisible and caused her to withdraw from him, behaving as if she, too, was depressed.
"I was so blocked up, I couldn't respond to her overtures," Lappen said. "Outside of the marriage, she wasn't depressed. She was able to tap into her vitality and vibrancy."
Lappen and his wife eventually divorced, and he later remarried a woman who also has bipolar disorder.
"The good news is that we both have bipolar disorder; the bad news is that we both have bipolar disorder," Lappen said, adding that their implicit understanding of the clinical nature of each other's moods made for a smoother relationship.
Clinical Condition?
But experts are quick to point out that clinical mood disorders are not contagious per se.
Depression and bipolar disorder are complex, rooted in genetics and subtle brain chemistry. Experts point out that these disorders cannot infect people nearby the way a virus could.
"A depressed person will not give you the same clinical disorder by contagion. They're just too complex for that," said Ian Gotlib, professor of psychology and director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Laboratory at Stanford University. "It is rare that you yourself will develop that same psychiatric disorder."
But a person with depression or other disorder can have a tremendous effect on those around them. Studies on college roommates show that when one person has depression, the other roommate can develop similar behaviors and feel more down.
"It's not the mimicry, it's the stress of being around them," Gotlib said. "The mood stuff happens, but it's not clinical."
Coping strategies are critical when dealing with a depressed spouse.
"If the caregiver believes the behavior is caused by the illness, they are less likely to be affected," Galynker said. "If they think the behavior is the result of a character flaw, they are more likely to be affected because then they also place blame on themselves."
Carol Rossetti never thought she had a clinical condition, but she eventually became so unhappy with her husband that they separated.
"When I left him after 34 years of marriage, I didn't think we'd get back together," Carol said. "I was perfectly fine not being with him."
But Ron quit his job and went through therapy to get his disorder under control, and after a year of separation, the Rossettis came together again. Now both Ron and Carol know how to maneuver around Ron's episodes.
"The last ½ to two years have been the most worry-free of my life," Carol said. "Now he's a born-again bipolar person."
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Permalink Reply by Arachneh on
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Related feature:
Negativity Is Contagious, Study Finds
Copyright 2007, ScienceDaily
Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Though we may not care to admit it, what other people think about something can affect what we think about it. This is how critics become influential and why our parents' opinions about our life choices continue to matter, long after we've moved out. But what kind of opinions have the most effect? An important new study in the Journal of Consumer Research reveals that negative opinions cause the greatest attitude shifts, not just from good to bad, but also from bad to worse.
"Consumer attitudes toward products and services are frequently influenced by others around them. Social networks, such as those found on Myspace and Facebook suggest that these influences will continue to be significant drivers of individual consumer attitudes as society becomes more inter-connected," explain Adam Duhachek, Shuoyang Zhang, and Shanker Krishnan (all of Indiana University). "Our research seeks to understand the conditions where group influence is strongest."
Consumers were presented with information about a new product and allowed to independently form their evaluations. As would be normally expected with many products, some of these evaluations were positive and others negative.
The researchers then revealed to participants whether their peers evaluated the product negatively or positively. They found that the opinions of others exert especially strong influence on individual attitudes when these opinions are negative. Additionally, consumers that privately held positive attitudes toward the product were more susceptible to influence from group opinion than those who initially held negative opinions.
Furthermore, the researchers also found that those with negative opinions of the product were likely to become even more negative if asked to participate in a group discussion: "When consumers expect to interact with other consumers through these forums, learning the views of these other consumers may reinforce and even polarize their opinions, making them more negative," the researchers reveal.
"This research has several interesting implications. First, given the strong influence of negative information, marketers may need to expend extra resources to counter-act the effects of negative word of mouth in online chatrooms, blogs and in offline media. Conversely, companies could damage the reputations of competitors by disseminating negative information online," the researchers explain. "Consumers should be aware that these social influence biases exist and are capable of significantly impacting their perceptions."
Reference: Adam Duhachek, Shuoyang Zhang, and Shanker Krishnan, "Anticipated Group Interaction: Coping with Valence Asymmetries in Attitude Shift." Journal of Consumer Research: October 2007.
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Permalink Reply by Maire Hel Wolf on -
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I am very disciplined in 99% of all cases and you would not notice that I am trying to spread this disorder and plan to ultimately ruin the world.
I do not have any family. And I meet my few friends only if I know I am being well or I work myself out until that specific date and time. I am very smooth and able to entertain and amuse with non offensive humour and funny anecdotes.
Like the flu, depression is a highly contagious disorder that can be transmitted socially. Well now yeah at least I do not produce such sentences suddenly I feel better.
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Permalink Reply by 3DDY on -
Thanks for posting this Arachneh!
This helps to prove a point that I've been trying to get across about the power of Positive Thinking. Positive Thinking manifests positive energy into positive gifts!...and visa versa.
Spreading negativity can only breed negativity. Someone starts spreading rumors about a massive disaster, and this only breeds into a negative outlook, fear, and possibly panic that could lead to emotional instability.
Life is full of ups and downs...without one, you wouldn't recognize and enjoy the other. So...why worry about nonsense, when one could just experience and enjoy Life on our short visit! ;)
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Permalink Reply by Maire Hel Wolf on
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other peoples denial for instance is a depression trigger of mine, that is why i indulge in parodies sometimes :)
actually there is no proof to this. I like positive thinking but i smite inquisition (oh negative vibes!) because that may not be negative thinking but plain olde healthy aggression :)
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Permalink Reply by 3DDY on
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Positive thinking is what initiates Magick through Will and Belief...like the saying goes, "Faith can move mountains".
If you believe that you can do something, you are more apt to achieve, rather than if you disbelieve.
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Permalink Reply by Maire Hel Wolf on
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Maybe I am a little upset because we have had a few death cases of people who had depression, who isolated themselves in shame (and because they did not want to drag anyone down) of their illness...and ultimately landed in the news for having committed suicide.
our society hates depressive people. it is worse than having a venereal disease (which is at least associated with "fun" in some weird way).
Beck said: "I was always too hard working to be depressive" Now that says it all about how you are treated.
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Permalink Reply by 3DDY on
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Everybody is a special creature in their own way. We all have emotions, whether we like to share them or not. Emotions, however, should not control our thinking and actions, but we should become more subconsciously aware of our emotional triggers that try to consciously control our thinking, which could lead to selfish or destructive behaviors against other beings.
Many mental disorders are attributed to a chemical imbalance in the brain. However, many disorders are also contributed to a lack of self discipline. This self discipline can be discovered through your sub conscious mind and its affects on your thinking.
Some people live with phobias. These phobias are initiated through mental conditioning, and are usually instilled subconsciously in childhood. A great way to gain access and control over your subconscious thinking and gain control over phobia emotional triggers, is through Lucid Dreaming. With Lucid Dreaming, one can address their subconscious emotional issues, bring them to a conscious level of thinking, and then control the outcome of a regular uncontrollable situation as induced from subconscious behavior conditioning.
Try not to not let life control you and your response, but strive to work in emotional and Spiritual harmony.
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Permalink Reply by Rhiannonfirewitch on -
I really don't think depression is contagious. One has to look at the causes for their depression, like environment, finances, unless you have a mental illness. I try not to worry about anything, that makes me depressed. Too me worry is mental cancer, and can cause that bad word called depression. Just my 2 cents. ;)
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Permalink Reply by 3DDY on
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However, negativity can be spread to others and can be used as a devise for trying to manipulate others through subliminal suggestions. One needs to become aware of themselves and their subconscious structure, in order to maintain a healthy outlook and not be controlled by outside interference against one's harmony.
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Permalink Reply by Arachneh on
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However, negativity can be spread to others and can be used as a devise for trying to manipulate others through subliminal suggestions.
This I agree with . . . many (most?) of us have probably seen some version of "When the Queen is unhappy, everyone is unhappy" played out in families, work environments, etc. Part of it is sh*t rolling down hill; part of it is an enforced emotional environment.
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