As a Cope with Depression and Insomnia

If you're depressed, one of your most debilitating symptoms could be the want of a good night's sleep. Here's how to accustom the depression-insomnia cycle. There is no vacillate that depression and insomnia often share the for all that bed. In fact, numerous published studies from documented a relationship between depression and sleeplessness, and insomnia is a stock symptom of depression.
The most recent explore, which was presented at a meeting of the Associated Acknowledgement Sleep Societies, found that “midget sleepers” (people who get less than six hours of take a nap a night) suffer from higher levels of despondency severity than people who snooze soundly for six to nine hours. But what comes firstly troubled sleep or a troubled consider castigate? 
Both discouragement and insomnia may share the same pathways in the sense, and both may be related to a disruption of majority rhythms. Studies show that when the slumber-wake cycle is disturbed, insomnia, buy Ambien online and downturn may result.
Here are some findings from the universal research on insomnia and depression:
* Insomnia is worse when it is accompanied by gloominess.
* Insomnia is one of the most plain depression symptoms.
* Insomnia may be one of the essential symptoms of depression and the key depression symptom to come back when someone who is depressed has a cavity relapse.
* Someone with insomnia has a 10 times higher jeopardy of becoming stress than someone who sleeps kindly. 
Linking Insomnia and Depression
Here are just some of the theories about how insomnia and depression may interact:

• Insomnia may decrease a person’s quality of life and lead to depression.
• Lying awake at night may make depressive thoughts worse and trigger depression.
• Insomnia may change brain chemicals in a way that triggers depression.
• Insomnia may be an early warning symptom of a change in body rhythms that may lead to depression.

Types of insomnia a depressed person may experience include:

• Trouble falling asleep
• Trouble staying asleep
• Waking up tired
• Waking up early in the morning

Coping With Nighttime Depression
 The first affair you need to know is the difference between authentic depression and just feeling bawdy or down. Symptoms of depression tabulate persistent sadness, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, buy Valium, and a erosion of interest in things you once enjoyed.
This atmosphere disorder interferes with your unimpaired life including the way you, work, eat, about, and sleep. If you have symptoms of dimple with or without insomnia, talk to your doctor advantageously away. Both depression and insomnia are treatable. These tips can daily help you deal with depression and insomnia while you are getting lend a hand:
* Receive a comfortable and quiet sleeping conditions. Use your bedroom primarily for sleeping, not for talking on the phone, texting, and watching idiot box.
* Get help from loved ones. Let them identify your sleep is an important comparatively of your recovery and ask them not to bananas you.
* Keep as close to a patron sleep schedule as possible. Go to catch forty winks and wake up at the same time every day.
* Experience a sleep routine. Include relaxing activities like reading or entrancing a bath before bed. Watching the current news is not a relaxing routine.
* Get doc exercise every day. Exercise helps save depression and can produce healthy listlessness, leading to restful sleep.
* Get out in the morning sunlight every day if achievable. This helps you set your biological clock.
* Get up if you can’t zizz. Don’t just lie in bed staring at the ceiling get out of bed and do a calmness activity for a while until you consider tired.
* Avoid afternoon naps, caffeine, and alcohol. Alcohol may help you fall asleep, but it order keep you from staying asleep.
Deceitful awake at night when you're depressed can gather depression seem worse and also be partial of a vicious cycle that makes bust more serious. If you have symptoms of downheartedness day or night, visit your doctor or a cognitive health professional. Getting your gloom treated is the first step, buy diazepam generic valium, and information how to cope with nighttime cavity is an important part of that treatment.

Spirituality protects against depression

Those who worship a higher power often do so in different ways. Whether they are active in their religious community, or prefer to simply pray or meditate, new research out of Temple University suggests that a person's religiousness - also called religiosity - can offer insight into their risk for depression.
Lead researcher Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., characterized the religiosity of 918 study participants in terms of three domains of religiosity: religious service attendance, which refers to being involved with a church; religious well-being, which refers to the quality of a person's relationship with a higher power; and existential well-being, which refers to a person's sense of meaning and their purpose in life.
In a study published on-line this month in Psychological Medicine, Maselko and fellow researchers compared each domain of religiosity to their risk of depression, and were surprised to find that the group with higher levels of religious well-being were 1.5 times more likely to have had depression than those with lower levels of religious well-being.
Maselko theorizes this is because people with depression tend to use religion as a coping mechanism. As a result, they're more closely relating to God and praying more.
Researchers also found that those who attended religious services were 30 percent less likely to have had depression in their lifetime, and those who had high levels of existential well-being were 70 percent less likely to have had depression than those who had low levels of existential well-being.
Maselko says involvement in the church provides the opportunity for community interaction, which could help forge attachments to others, an important factor in preventing depression. She added that those with higher levels of existential-well being have a strong sense of their place in the world.

"People with high levels of existential well-being tend to have a good base, which makes them very centered emotionally," said Maselko. "People who don't have those things are at greater risk for depression, and those same people might also turn to religion to cope."
Maselko admits that researchers have yet to determine which comes first: depression or being religious, but is currently investigating the time sequence of this over people's lives to figure out the answer.
"For doctors, psychiatrists and counselors, it's hard to disentangle these elements when treating mental illness," she said. "You can't just ask a patient if they go to church to gauge their spirituality or coping behaviors. There are other components to consider when treating patients, and its important information for doctors to have."

Wyeth’s Pristiq: New Treatment For Major Depression

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals’ PRISTIQ (desvenlafaxine), a new serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) approved to treat adult patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), is now available in U.S. retail pharmacies nationwide. The recommended dose of PRISTIQ is 50 milligrams (mg) once daily. The Company begins full-scale selling and educational efforts regarding PRISTIQ for physicians this week.
%26quot;We are proud to make PRISTIQ available as a new treatment option for the millions of American adults who struggle with depression,%26quot; comments Philip Ninan, M.D., Vice President, Wyeth Medical Affairs, Neuroscience. %26quot;The recommended therapeutic dose of PRISTIQ is 50 mg once daily. Titration is not required to reach the recommended therapeutic dose.%26quot; Dosage adjustment (50 mg every other day) is necessary, however, in patients with severe renal impairment or end-stage renal disease.
About PRISTIQ
PRISTIQ, an SNRI approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on February 29, 2008, is an important new treatment option for the millions of adults in the United States who have MDD. Discovered and developed by Wyeth, PRISTIQ demonstrates the Company’s significant and continued commitment to developing new therapies in the field of neuroscience.
At the recommended dose of 50 mg, the discontinuation rate due to an adverse experience for PRISTIQ (4.1 percent) was similar to the rate for placebo (3.8 percent) in clinical studies. The most commonly observed adverse reactions in patients taking PRISTIQ for MDD in short-term, fixed-dose studies (incidence greater than or equal to 5 percent and at least twice the rate of placebo in the 50 mg dose groups) were nausea, dizziness, hyperhidrosis, constipation and decreased appetite.
About Major Depressive Disorder
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mental disorder, affecting about 121 million people worldwide. In the United States, MDD affects approximately 15 million adults, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. In fact, depression is among the leading causes of disability and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease. Further, a research study estimated that the total economic burden of depression was $83.1 billion in 2000, including direct treatment costs and suicide- and work-related costs.
Important Treatment Considerations
WARNING: SUICIDALITY AND ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUGS
* Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders.
* Anyone considering the use of PRISTIQ or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need.
* Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a reduction in risk with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older.
* Depression and certain other psychiatric disorders are themselves associated with increases in the risk of suicide.
* Patients of all ages who are started on antidepressant therapy should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior. Families and caregivers should be advised of the need for close observation and communication with the prescriber.

Homeowners In Foreclosure Suffer Major Depression

The nation’s home foreclosure epidemic may be taking its toll on Americans’ health as well as their wallets. Nearly half of people studied while undergoing foreclosure reported depressive symptoms, and 37 percent met screening criteria for major depression, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research published online this week in the American Journal of Public Health. Many also reported an inability to afford prescription drugs, and skipping meals. The authors say their findings should serve as a call for policy makers to tie health interventions into their response to the nation’s ongoing housing crisis.
“The foreclosure crisis is also a health crisis,” says lead author Craig E. Pollack, MD, MHS, who conducted the research while working as an internist and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at Penn. “We need to do more to ensure that if people lose their homes, they don’t also lose their health.”
In addition to the high number of participants reporting depression symptoms, the study of 250 Philadelphia homeowners undergoing foreclosure also shed light on other health care problems that may be spurred by difficulties keeping up with housing costs. The study participants were recruited with the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley, a non-profit, U.S. Housing and Urban Development-approved mortgage counselor.
The authors found that compared to a sample of residents in the general public, those in foreclosure were more likely to be uninsured (22 percent compared to 8 percent), though similar health problems were seen among both the insured and uninsured. Nearly 60 percent reported that they had skipped or delayed meals because they couldn’t afford food, and people undergoing foreclosure were also more likely to have forgone filling a prescription because of the expense during the preceding year (48 percent vs. 15 percent). The study also revealed that for 9 percent of respondents, a medical condition in their family was the primary reason for the home foreclosure, and more than a quarter of those surveyed said they had significant unpaid medical bills.
Because the financial hardships of foreclosure may lead homeowners to cut back on health care spending that they consider “discretionary” – preventive care visits, healthy foods or drugs for chronic conditions like hypertension – Pollack theorizes that the prolonged period of time that most homeowners spend in foreclosure could have a serious effect on health outcomes. In addition, the stress of undergoing foreclosure may exacerbate health-undermining behaviors. Among the participants who smoke, for instance, 65 percent said they had been smoking more since they received notice of foreclosure. The “exceptionally high” rate of depressive symptoms found in the study is especially concerning, Pollack says, compared to previous research showing that only about 12.8 percent of people living in poverty meet criteria for major depressive disorder.
“When people purchase homes, they are buying a piece of the American Dream,” says co-author Julia Lynch, PhD, the Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences in Penn’s department of political science. “Losing a home can be especially devastating because it means the loss of this dream. When this happens, there is reason to worry not only about the health of the home owner but also that of family members and the broader community they live in.”
The authors say that the data collected in Philadelphia may be only the tip of the iceberg when compared to other cities that have experienced a sharp spike in housing foreclosures. Although foreclosure filings nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008 in Philadelphia, other large cities have higher unemployment and foreclosure rates.
To combat the health problems revealed in the study, Pollack and Lynch suggest that health care workers and mortgage counseling agencies coordinate their efforts to help people at risk of foreclosure access both medical and housing help. Doctors, they suggest, should ask their patients about their housing situation and steer them towards mortgage relief resources. Mortgage counselors, meanwhile, can provide information about how to access safety net health care, enroll in public insurance programs like SCHIP or Medicaid, or apply for nutritional assistance programs for pregnant and nursing mothers and their children. The implications for policy, too, are vast.
“This study raises the stakes of the housing crisis,” Pollack says. “The policy push to get people into mortgage counseling should be combined with health outreach in order to fully help people during this tremendously difficult period in their lives.”

Should young people be given antidepressants for depression treatment?

Youth and depression treatment
Depression is disabling a growing proportion of children, but evidence on treatment is disputed. In this week’s BMJ, two experts debate whether young people should be given antidepressants.
To deny these vulnerable groups the possibility of receiving antidepressants would be to withhold one of the few evidence based treatments available to them, argues Andrew Cotgrove, Clinical Director and Consultant in Adolescent Psychiatry at Pine Lodge Young People’s Centre in Chester.
It is the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in children that has been most controversial. However, objective analysis of the studies shows a significant benefit over placebo for some SSRIs and guidelines recommend that they can be used for the treatment of depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder in young people.
Research shows that there is an increase in suicide related events, but the risk is small and can be reduced further by careful monitoring, he says. There is also some evidence that psychological treatments (cognitive behavioural therapy, interpersonal therapy, and family therapy) are effective for depression in young people, but the effects are small.
Worrying methodological errors, publication bias, and omissions of evidence in the conduct and reporting of some SSRI trials have rightly alarmed the medical profession and the public, he writes. However, careful and objective review of the evidence shows that antidepressants have a place in treating young people with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Parents and young people need to be told the risks and benefits, given advice, and be supported in choosing an evidence based treatment.
Removing antidepressants from this choice would take away one of the few potentially effective interventions for these disabling conditions, he concludes.
Continuing to use SSRIs in young people is not good value for money, dangerous, and ethically unsound, argues Sami Timimi, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in Lincolnshire.
None of the studies on SSRIs for childhood depression have showed significant advantage over placebo. Despite this, national guidelines have concluded that fluoxetine has a favourable balance of benefit over risk.
But the profile for fluoxetine is similar to that of all other SSRIs, says Timimi – it has little efficacy and is potentially dangerous. However, he acknowledges that the high placebo response can make it difficult for doctors faced with a distressed young person to accept that SSRIs may be ineffective.
Distorted reporting hasn’t helped this situation, he adds, and marketing spin has taken precedence over scientific accuracy. One reason for doing the studies in the first place was to justify well established prescribing patterns. It created a trend which has been difficult to reverse despite the evidence. But reverse it we must, as it is neither value for money nor clinically useful, may have resulted in a small but tragic number of avoidable suicides, and contributed to a trend of inappropriately medicalising common emotional states and experiences.
Most states of childhood distress are self limiting and do not require extensive intervention but, when intervention is necessary, psychotherapy has a well established record of effectiveness, he concludes.

Elderly People Not Dealing With Depression

Depression in older people is a common problem and very few get the help they need. There are a variety of reasons depression in older adults is so often overlooked. Some believe that it is natural with age, while others believe depression is just a part of the aging process.
Physicians tend to ignore depression in older patients because they spend more time focusing on their physical complaints. There are many consequences of this oversight because untreated depression poses very serious risks for older adults.
Dr. Gary Kennedy, chief of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and a leading authority on elderly depression, calls the condition a “major public health problem.” Kennedy says many health practitioners who care for the elderly are unprepared and unable to detect signs of depressed individuals. “Most don’t ask the simple questions that screen for depression,” he says.
Some of the symptoms in elderly people with depression can be loss of interest, difficulty concentrating, fatigue tiredness or weariness, depressed or irritable mood, not eating as much, daytime sleepiness, sleeping problems, waking up many times through the night, loss of interest or pleasure, aches and pains, weight loss or gain, agitation, anxiety and Irresponsible behavior.
Depression in the elderly can increases their risk of death. Studies in nursing homes have shown that the presence of depression substantially increased the likelihood of death if someone that is ill and also is associated with increased risk of death following a heart attack even if the depression was mild. Surprising as it may seem, many studies confirm that the elderly, and especially elderly-men, have high blood pressure or abnormal heart rhythms when they experience depression.
It is important to know that a depressed person is not always obviously sad rather they may seem apathetic, unreactive, preoccupied, or indifferent to activities and interests that once brought pleasure. They may want to do nothing more than sit and “hold the chair down” and feel quite okay with that.
If you suspect your elderly loved one is depressed, ask them to seek help, often they wont, however, you can attempt to educated them and help them become aware that depression in elderly is treatable.