Depression and performance

Hi Yog, before we go into dialogue, try logging on to the depression site that we have at uncommon Knowledge - www.clinical-depression.co.uk , it will answer many of the questions that you have asked...........and then let us know how helpful it was........and in what areas. We can then go over anything that might still need to be addressed
Jill

Hi Yog .

Depressed people have a greater concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood streams. This of course indicates a long term stress response. When we go into the fight or flight response (short term stress response) many non-essential functions temporarily 'shut down'. These include sex drive (not approriate to be aroused whilst fleeing a lion )appetite, growth hormone, immune repsonse and conscious clear thinking all these things shut down as we become 'fleeing mechanisms' in the face of danger.

However if stress is prolonged then the temporary switching off of sex drive may manifest as decreased sex drive long term, the shutting down of digestion could lead to digestive disorders, immune suppression becomes longer term leading to increased illness in the long term stressed. So responses which were originally adaptive become problems in themselves until the person begins to relax more again.

Depressed people use their right hemispheres much more than the left as negative emotionality 'works' on the right hand side. This is why it is difficult to concentrate, learn new material etc when feeling low.

The left hemisphere deals more with logic, sequnces etc which is why it is good for depressed people, if possible, to make themselves do logical tasks and sequenced behaviours as this dilutes the over activity of the right hemisphere and so eventually improves mood ("An active brain is a healthy brain)

Also the hippocampus in the brain which has to do with short term memory ,and the laying down of new information and learning, actually shrinks when we are long term stressed as glucose is 'stolen' from it to feed other parts of the body in order to fight threat. So we can literally have less memory storage capacity in our brains when stressed and negitively emotional for a long time.

Hope all this makes sense

Mark

mark tyrrell wrote:
Depressed people use their right hemispheres much more than the left as negative emotionality 'works' on the right hand side. This is why it is difficult to concentrate, learn new material etc when feeling low.

Mark, please help me understand one point:
To me negative emotionality=ruminating=worrying.
Aren't the above conscious processes?
Ciao