Depression also affects your ability to think straight, you know?

There is no doubt that depression is one of the most prevalent illnesses at the moment, and just as it is important to talk about mental health, it is equally essential to know more deeply about each illness that may compromise our emotional well-being.

A new study from Harvard University revealed that depression also affects our thinking ability. In addition to the typical symptoms of the disease, which include feeling sad and empty for long periods; the feeling of lack of energy; the lack of interest in things that once gave pleasure; and variations in appetite and sleep; Depression is now proven to also hurt our brains in terms of attention, memory, information processing, and decision-making ability.

The list of negative symptoms really grows, and it doesn't stop there: depression also diminishes what we call cognitive flexibility (which is basically our ability to adapt projects and strategies to change) and executive functioning, which is our ability to respond. action in general.

Treatments

In cases of severe depression, the use of medication resolves mood and energy issues, as well as giving the patient a sense of motivation in the face of everyday challenges - antidepressants are believed to be less useful even for mild or severe depression. moderate.

What is still unclear, however, is how treatment with this drug affects the brain in terms of cognitive dysfunction, but the results of recent research on the subject have just been released.

This research was based on over 1, 000 patients who treated depression with escitalopram, sertraline or venlafaxine. For the studies, they had to perform some cognitive tests, and what was realized was that there was no difference of action between the drugs in this regard - besides, 95% of the patients showed no performance improvement.

Hope

The truth is that, for the scientific team, this result is not surprising; after all, the purpose of antidepressants has never been to improve cognitive brain functions, but to improve the patient's mood and willingness to do pleasant activities.

Moreover, emotional functions are processed in different brain regions than those that process cognitive functions, so these remedies did not work in that regard. The expectation is that new drugs can act in these two areas.

Therapy

Treatment of depression usually includes other types of therapy than drug therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy can be very useful for patients with cognitive impairment as it makes them learn to recognize and cope with cognitive difficulties. .

Cognitive rehabilitation therapy is also an option, as it is based on exercises designed to improve the memory and executive functioning of patients' brains. Combining drugs with some kind of psychological therapy certainly produces better results, especially in the long run.

Studies like this help us better understand the complexity of the human brain, as well as its facets in terms of illness and mental disorders. Knowing is critical to finding new ways to treat, and maybe someday we'll have a complete enough medicine to meet all the chemical demands of a person with depression.