Custom «The Biopsychosocial Perspective of Depression» Essay Paper

Depression is a proof that some psychological, physical and mental characteristics of people’s lives are suffering from constant disorder. On the whole, a set of psychological, chemical, environmental and genetic facets lead to depression. According to statistics, this disease, not very serious at first glance, affects more that 19 million people of the United States. The biological constituent of the biopsychosocial model try to find out how the cause of the illness originates from the individual body’s work.

Depression is distinguished by feelings of insufficiency, despair, sorrow and sadness. There are two major motives for it: psychosocial and biomedical. The biopsychosocial approach was advanced at Rochester more than ten years ago by Drs. John Romano and George Engel. This approach involves psychological, social and biological aspects and also their interplay in illness and health care conception (Frankel RM, 2003).

Depression is classified by its aetiology: seasonal disorder, medical conditions, premenstrual depression. It can be occurred by some negative background: divorce, dismissal, grief, sorrow, crime and others. Depression can also be a result of positive moments in life, such as childbirth, marriage, new job or graduation. It most frequently happens in the early adulthood, when a young person faces some challenges on his or her path. Fewer cases of depression happen in late adulthood as most people are already used to all trials.

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It is hard to be responsive and sociable if somebody feels depressed. However, being alone can lead to worse consequences when people hide themselves from the surrounding. That is why it is very important to be around people all the time that will help the decrease the feeling of loneliness and isolation. There no absolute cause of depression had been distinguished; however, there a few theories may clarify the source of depression.

The biopsychosocial model of depression is based on social cognitive theory. It indicates that psychological, biological and social aspects are connected to each other. In other words, there is a big interdependence between the intellect and the body: anything that affects the intellect, by all means, influences on the body. That is why any mental disorder, such as depression is a result of psychological and social behavior of people (Rashmi Nemade, 2007, September 19). There is also a theory that depression is a consequence of human’s discrimination; however it was not fully investigated.

Biopsychosocial model facilitates the process of investigation of the depression with the help of social, psychological and biological aspects. According to biological factors, as it generally known people under depression are suffering from neurotransmitter and immune system disorder. Moreover, depression is responsible for people’s vulnerability to recovering from any other physical disorders. A few examinations indicate that genes can have impact on spread of depression from one generation to another.

As a result of depression people tend to be affected by slowed-down way of thinking, evaluation problems, and aggravated ability to understand, apprehend and convey emotions. To some extent, these psychological causes can be influenced by biology: people’s inherent nature and biological personality features can have impact on people’s depressive condition.

Social factors are of special importance while researching depression: bullying, disturbing situations, lack of proper communication or divorce. A few researches have proved that different stressful social factors can lead to serious changes in brain functioning. Even more, social aspects tend to be more harmful for people’s state of mind than actual trauma (Mauro Garcia-Toro, 2006, December 1).

Unemployment, dismissal, workplace stress and stressful life events are the most common psychosocial aspects causing depression. According to gender statistics, more women are identified with this kind of disease. In 80% of women their depression ends up with committing the suicide. Regarding men, there are only 50 % of them fall into this category. One half of men who are committing suicide have some mental disorder and another half has alcoholism.

Biopsychosocial stressors may play a crucial role in causing the depression at any age. Scientists are distinguishing three the most common biopsychosocial stressors – life events, constant stress, and daily struggles. A life event is a sudden big change in life that replaces the usual behavior and endangers people’s well-being. Constant stress is a result of long-term situations which put people’s life under the pressure, such as personal difficulties and conflicts. At the same time, daily struggles can be annoying too. Day-to-day grind appears to be stressful too. To resist these stressors one can provide an appropriate and protective support such as multiplicity and saturation of everyday life.

In accordance to the National Institutes of Health, there considered to be three pivotal types of depression: bipolar disorder or manic depression, major depression and dysthemia. People who are suffering from bipolar disorder experience the moments of extreme highs and extreme lows. They usually fail to produce clear judgments and thoughts, their work and personal life are often under the pressure.

Major depression is known by such symptoms as apathy to the surroundings, losing pleasure in everyday activities. This type of depression is very serious comparing to other, but still it may occur once in life or several times, depending on the process of treatment.

Dysthemia is less dangerous than major depression but still it has some negative outcomes on people’s health. Those who are suffering from dysthemia are characterized by a constant low mood. Similarly to the major depression, the dysthmia may occur one or more time in people’s life (Jennifer Jilks, 2007, July 6).

Depression affects every person differently, and due to this fact there is no common treatment for it. Nevertheless, the sooner people start treatment the more effective it will be. The treatment used for adults is anti-depressants and therapy. Sometimes exercises are also helpful. If to take adolescents and children into account, they are usually treated by means of exercises and therapy. For those who do not respond well to antidepressants, these are young people under the age of 24, the professionals counsel therapy or exercises.

Depression is not just the adult disease. It is shown in the statistics that a lot of teenagers have these problems. In fact, teenager’s depression is arguably more pivotal than the adult depression. Because of the emotional and social turmoil, things that are hard to realize for anyone can be devastating to a teenager. Such psychosocial factor as the death of a relative, parent’s divorce, removal, and break up with girlfriend or boyfriend can lead to the appearance of depression.

Teenagers with depression express their feelings as hopeless about everything and they are sure that nothing worth the effort. Moreover they assume their life like a senseless residence which is difficult to combat with. They truly believe that they are not good at anything, even more, that they are helpless creatures. Depression in teenagers can also affect school attending and learning, social connection and peer relationships, reduce of self-esteem and skills and relations in the family.

All in all, depression is a mental illness that affects the mind and can have remarkable outcomes on physical and social conditions. The biopsychosocial model and scientific evidences claim, that the interdependent aspects that were discussed above all have impact on each other. Some of these aspects are biological, such as genetic outcomes and changes in the organism. Some of them are psychological, such as negative behavior and some of them are social, such as divorce or social isolation.