Life Stress and Major Depression Article

1. How do we use stress in understanding psychological disorders and medical conditions? What are the authors arguing that we should do?
      I has long since been a commonly accepted theory that excessive amounts of stress leads to psychological disorders, and specifically depression. There has also a substantial amount of proof that there is some association between stressful major life events and depression. Stress has been overly accepted as the explanatory factor for many disorders of unknown origins. Most individuals that are under stress are not clinically depressed so psychologists are trying to distinguish stress from major depression.
2. How common is depression? How long has it been known? How well known is it?
      Major Depression Disorder (MDD) is one of the most common psychological disorders and the fifth leading cause of disability. Approximately 16% of the population of the United States will suffer MDD at some point in their lives. It is twice as common in women as it is in men. Clear clinical conditions have been mentioned in ancient religious texts and medical journals; however, depression was not popularized until the 1980s by the FDA and in 1997 by the pharmaceutical industry.
3. What have researchers claimed about stress and depression? What do recent findings show? What problems are present in earlier evidence? What kind of stress causes depression (or is it actually a cause)?
      Using interview-based testing, researchers have found that stress casually precedes depression and is related to independent life events that are beyond a n individual's control. In the late 1960s the modern stress theory and the life-event-checklist were the major measuring factors of depression; however, these associations were refuted due to poor research design and faulty practices. Early findings confounded live events with actual symptoms (meaning they thought that losing your job was a cause of depression instead of a symptom). Approximately 50-80% of people diagnosed with depression reported recent severely stressful life events prior to onset.
4. What proportion of people who suffer major life stress become depressed? Why is the proportion so small? What factors come together to produce depression?
       Only about 1 in 5 people exposed to sever life events actually develop depression. The proportion can be higher, depending on circumstances. Early trauma, social support, and genetic predisposition are all factors believed to influence the vulnerability of depression.
5. Why does depression occur without stress? What forms of depression might not depend on stressors?
       It has been found that major life events may initiate someone's first episode of depression, but are not necessarily needed to precede or provoke subsequent recurrences. Depression caused by biological factors or from an escalating susceptibility may not require major stressors.
6. How should research in the future be designed to clarify the stress-depression issue? Why is there a lot of variability in the depression category as it is currently diagnosed? How can we tell normal from abnormal reactions?
       Future research should recognize that MDD has a heterogeneous assortment of conditions and syndromes. It needs to distinguish between situational crises, short-term adjustments, and long-term clinical depression. It should also use community samples to predict and account for normal distress responses to acute life stress. More extensive interviewing that more extensively examines one's individual life, and that monitors mood patterns, may more accurately judge whether a patient truly has major depression.