Depression Considered "Contagious"
New Posters: Please acquaint yourself with this thread (yes, that means reading it) before jumping in. Thank you. ;)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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 Gary ~Mit Leib und Seele~ on -
Thanks but those are long past, It was just an example of something I could compare to panic attacks. But I still would like to know more. I searched for years for something about it and never found anything.
It would be interesting if I can finally put a name on something that caused me so much fear in my past. And even if there is any lore on what effect it has on their victims in the long term.
I think I was bathed in fear for so long is has little effect on me now. I am someone you want around in a crisis because my mind is clear of fear and panic. I think partially because I felt such pure fear for so long.
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Permalink Reply by Arachneh on -
Gary, night terrors are a form of nocturnal panic attack --- my sister used to have them. They usually affect children, but they can also continue into adulthood.
What you describe is sleep paralysis, which is also related to night terrors and panic attacks. I've had sleep paralysis off and on since childhood, and yes, lucid dreaming is a great technique for that --- I've been able to train myself to fall back into deep sleep and awaken normally.
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Permalink Reply by Gary ~Mit Leib und Seele~ on
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I finally beat the experience by learning a dream control method called lucid dreaming. It takes a long time to train yourself to do but its really cool to be able to control dreams. Its not something that I can do at will, but I do have lucid dreams fairly frequently. Once you can consciously be aware you are dreaming you can do whatever you want. I used this method to defeat fearful dreams.
Lucid dreaming is not a new age or metaphysical kinda thing. Its training yourself to realize you are dreaming. I'm sure you have experienced it before. A lot of books are full of crap and associate it with astral projection and out of body experience. Real lucid dreaming is backed by science.
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Permalink Reply by Arachneh on
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Reply by AlanHeartsong 12 hours ago
Yeah, one of them keeps asking me to "heal" her depression with magic. And she's an Elder. [sigh]
Gah . . . :P
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Permalink Reply by AlanHeartsong on -
I know, I feel badly for her, and in the past I've tried magic, Reiki, and combinations of the two... but of course it doesn't work, because she's kind of stuck there now. She's on so many different medications for depression, insomnia, blood pressure, etc. that her systems have to be completely out of whack, it'd take a magical bulldozer to plow through all that to get in there and fix anything I think.
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Permalink Reply by Arachneh on
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Holy crap . . . yes, there's definitely a point where all the interactions and side-effects from a lot of different meds really complicate the underlying condition.
You could still send her regular distant Reiki . . . it may not cut through the crap in a way she can immediately perceive, but it may help her on a spiritual level, at least.
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Permalink Reply by Gary ~Mit Leib und Seele~ on
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I think people who don't suffer from depression realize how REAL it is for us. I don't know how depression affects you, but for me I see the worst of the world. I see all the evil of mankind and the suffering of the innocent. I feel it in my own core as if those peoples suffering is my own. I see the worst in people, the lies, the deceit, the evil intent in every little manipulative be happy speech. I literally had to stop watching television because it feeds that part of me.
Yea... I'm fuckin nuts. But nuts in a good way because I act to better the world not hurt it. I want their suffering to end to end my own. Sure its kinda selfish but its how I work it out, and others benefit from it.
Besides I'm lucid more often than not and my bouts of depression only last for short periods now.
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Permalink Reply by PamWiccan on -
That is how it is for me Gary. My little bouts of depression don't last too long at all. I just work them out as to why I am and in my mind talk myself of if it.
I have to leave in 10 mins and I would love to come back to this discussion as it is very close to my heart. Oh and a side note. I do hope their is no more crap in here. I want to be able to enjoy the company of other's that respect whom they are talking to and do not repeat themselves over and over again. You know who you are.
You all have a blessed day and see ya late this afternoon :)
BB
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