Is depression catching?

Well it’s an illness isn’t it so could it be catching. Certainly the number of people becoming ill are rising at an alarming rate. However when I read things such as depression is contagious I have to say I am somewhat annoyed as it implies that it’s virus you can catch like flu and having read an article entitled. Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression Can Be Contagious, I am irritated.

I have spent a great while with people telling me to take the pills and you’ll be fine and hearing people say I’m ill and there’s nothing I can do about...

Really! There’s always something you can do and that feeling of helplessness is something I feel needs to tackled head with a swift ‘don’t be silly of course you can do things to help yourself’

However I think that may be a bit harsh and certainly not very sympathetic to the people who are indeed suffering a great deal. As you can image I approached this article with some anger and quite ready to scoff my way through the results as being preposterous. In fact it took very little time to see that what they were talking about indeed could be described as a contagion although not a virus or a bacteria but a way of thinking, a view of life, an approach to life that may adversely affect the persons risk of becoming depressed.

What am I talking about?

Well it’s a bit difficult to explain and even after looking around I found it even more complicated but essentially certain ways of thinking lead to feeling a certain way about the future and how it will affect you that negatively affect how you feel.

This comes from the abstract to this article Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of depressive episodes and is one possible way that people may become vulnerable to depression through the way they think

People who engage in ruminative responses to depression, focusing on their symptoms and the possible causes and consequences of their symptoms, will show longer depressions than people who take action to distract themselves from their symptoms. Ruminative responses prolong depression because they allow the depressed mood to negatively bias thinking and interfere with instrumental behavior and problem-solving

But there are in fact many different ways a person may think or responds to life that may make them more at risk of depression.

And as most of us worry that our depression or problems may bring our friends and relatives down to the point where they may leave I think this article bears a thorough look. After concluding that there was a contagion effect in cognitive vulnerability, which increases the risk of depression, under these circumstances they concluded that

It is important to note that roommates’ level of depres­sive symptoms was not a significant predictor of changes in participants’ level of depressive symptoms at either 3 months (p > .40) or 6 months (p > .40). In other words, there was not a contagion effect for depressive symptoms

Underneath all the big words and statistics I found that although the risk factors for depression could be increased by being around someone who is more cognitively vulnerable, depressive symptoms were not.

The article tested very strict conditions under which this affect will be incorporated into a persons way of thinking; specifically big life changing and stressful events, such as going to college for the first time which is what this article was looking at and so under normal circumstances this effect would not occur and so living with someone is unlikely to cause the effect. They also mention that other life transitions, such as moving into a nursing home, may also affect it however although the cognitive vulnerability is passed or incorporated to the person who is less vulnerable the risk of symptoms of depression are not.  So moving in with someone for the first time, plus moving house may put someone at risk of increasing risk but not symptoms.

I might add that nowhere in the paper did it assess what affects interventions, such as talking therapy, could have on whether a persons vulnerability would change in these circumstance. What it did point out is that

Until now, it appeared that the only way to alter cognitive vulnerability to depression was to target it directly via cognitive therapy

And as they were specifically looking at whether a person’s cognitive vulnerability would be adversely affected by a random strangers at a life transitioning point in both their lives they didn’t discuss this.

It did however look at the possible use of these circumstances in improving interventions aimed at decreasing risk of depressive symptoms and stressed that a lot more research was needed to assess it possible success rate.