How to feel better about yourself if you are depressed

Today is National Depression Screening Day. If you are experiencing symptoms of depression, you should know that there are effective treatments and help is available. When you are depressed, your self-esteem wanes and you may start to dislike yourself. People with depression often think of themselves as “worthless, incapable of any achievement, and morally despicable.” Why do people who are depressed have this negative self-appraisal? And what could be happening in their brains? The study: In 2017, researcher and psychiatrist Christopher Davey and his colleagues compared the brain blood flow of 86 unmedicated depressed patients with that of 95 healthy control participants using a type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) called functional MRI. Depressed patients were in the early stages of their illness, but, as is often the case, two-thirds of them had an anxiety disorder as well. The tasks: The researchers asked participants to lie in an MRI machine, and then gave them several tasks to complete while they imaged their brain blood flow. The first task involved self-appraisal. During this task, participants had to indicate whether a certain descriptor fit them or not by pressing a left or right button that corresponded with “yes” or “no.” Then, they were asked whether words had four or more vowels (a task to test external attention). As you can imagine, this does not require internal attention like the self-reflection task did. The answers are in the words themselv...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Mental Health Screening Source Type: blogs