Reason to be Happy
Chronic depression may rob you of more than joy: the evidence is piling up that it can also steal your health
The majority of people who have survived some sort of heart event are, at least for a while. Some 65 percent of heart attack survivors are estimated to fall into depression, for example. According to Mended Hearts, the oldest and largest support group for people with heart disease, about 70 percent of patients who have gone through heart surgery, which often follows a heart attack, get depressed during the first year, and about a third continue to suffer from debilitating depression.
"I was just inside this ugly tunnel," says Dale Briggs, a Mended Hearts executive and an insurance fraud investigator from Fresno, Calif., who had a valve replaced in his heart 12 years ago at age 48 and was overwhelmed by the emotional consequences. He couldn't sleep, watched television for hours on end, and found it impossible to exercise or eat properly until his doctor prescribed medication and his depression lifted.
Brain drain. The research linking depression to dementia is still in its infancy and has raised more questions than it has answered. One study published in February, by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, found that adults with symptoms of depression scored a bit lower on cognitive tests than those who were not depressed, a finding that is consistent with extensive previous research on the way depression contributes to cognitive impairment. But only about 13 percent of the patients who eventually developed dementia were depressed.
At the same time, though, another group of researchers reported that the brains of Alzheimer's patients with a history of depression had more of the disease's characteristic tangles and plaques in the hippocampus--the area largely responsible for memory--than those of other patients. Moreover, their medical records indicated that they had succumbed more rapidly to the ravages of the illness. "About all we do know with certainty," says Michael Rapp, a resident at Mount Sinai medical school and one of the authors of the Alzheimer's study, "is that the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease is old age."
What also seems certain, however mysterious all these connections may be, is that mental health can no longer be considered a separate issue. Realizing that there may be links between his mental and physical illness has brought Bryce Miller some peace with a body that has often confused him. "When they stuck my finger 15 years ago and found out that I was diabetic, it never occurred to me that my depression had something to do with it," he says. "But now it just seems so clear: The brain is always connected to the body."
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