Drugs and the Unknown Causes of Depression

The human brain is the most complex organ in the body. Each part of the brain controls very specific functions in the body. For example, there is the frontal lobe, which has to do with organizing and planning. The temporal lobe controls memory and language functions. The occipital lobe corresponds to vision and the parietal lobe helps with math and spelling. Since each part of the brain is connected to certain things, a brain injury or hormonal imbalance could mean that the brain is not going to be carrying out these functions properly. People who undergo severe traumatic brain injuries often are not the same emotionally as they were before, and even personality traits may have changed.

There are many diseases that affect the body in its daily tasks, but they originate in the brain. Some of these include multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease. Autism is considered a developmental disorder originating in the brain. Some disorders that spark an interest in me are the personality and mood disorders. These are disorders that cannot be seen by physical symptoms all of the time, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive compulsive disorder.

According to Hardvard health, people with a history of depression tend to have a smaller hippocampus. If depression was just caused by a chemical imbalance, then medication should be able to solve that problem fairly quickly. Instead, it could be that people with depression will only feel better as nerves grow and form new connections, which is a process that takes weeks (2009). In a study done in 2007, some researchers studied changes in brain activity in depressed patients. There was an analysis on people at rest and comparing the brain activation to depressed people. People who had changes in brain function after receiving treatment were also analyzed, as well as a control group that was compared to people with depression experiencing complex emotions. The regions of the brain found to be involved in depression included frontal and temporal cortex as well as the cerebellum (2007).

For all of these disorders originating in the brain, drugs have been developed in an effort to give relief to patients who are suffering due to their diagnosis. Drugs work by interfering with neurons in the brain. Some drugs are prescribed to help cure or ease illnesses, but there are also drugs that alter brain function and are addicting, such as heroin and opioids. By acting as a natural chemical in the brain, drugs can change the way neurons go about sending and receiving signals, and therefore change the way it is working.

In the case of depression, medication can help to ease symptoms and improve mood. The NBCI website, last updated in June of 2020, explains the different medications available to treat depression. There are tricyclic antidepressants, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, and selective serotonin noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitors. These three are the most common. The main idea behind depression is that there is an imbalance of serotonin, but these drugs will help the brain to balance chemicals and prevent the re-uptake of serotonin so it is available (2020). A study done on the effectiveness of antidepressants suggests that there is a relationship between the severity of depression and how affective drugs were versus placebos. The results experienced by those who took antidepressants were the same as the results by those who took placebos (2008). This just adds to the question of if depression is caused simply by an imbalance in brain chemicals or if it goes deeper into the brain than we thought. If it is simply a chemical imbalance, then drugs should be able to clear it up immediately.

Because the brain is such complex organ that we don’t even completely understand, it is even harder to create effective drugs for it. In order to create a perfect drug to cure depression, or even any of the other neurological disorders aforementioned, we would need to have a perfect understanding of what is causing these disorders and target the source directly. Perhaps, with enough research, we will one day be able to find the causes of these disorders and be able to treat them more effectively.

Sources: 

“Depression: How Effective Are Antidepressants?” InformedHealth.org [Internet]., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 18 June 2020, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK361016/. h.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-depression.

Fitzgerald, Paul B., et al. "A meta‐analytic study of changes in brain activation in depression." Human brain mapping 29.6 (2008): 683-695.

Ioannidis, John PA. "Effectiveness of antidepressants: an evidence myth constructed from a thousand randomized trials?." Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 3.1 (2008): 1-9.

Publishing, Harvard Health. “What Causes Depression?” Harvard Health, June 2009, www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-depression.