An Alternative Solution to Depression
June 26, 2008 – 11:52 pm
What is depression?
Many people describe depression (also known as major depressive disorder) as typical “sadness.” But clinical and non-clinical, depression can also refer to a combination of more than one feeling.
Depression is one of the most common psychological problems and people are tired of not finding right solutions to it. On the other hand, hopefully a researcher called Mark Rasenick, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, explained: “We will be clearly able to say in the near future that whether you are depressed or not and in this way whether you respond a medical treatment or not.”
A new research on solutions
Rasenick and his team have researched on 16 people’s brain specimen who have never had experiences about depression and 16 people’s brain specimen who committed suicide because of depression. They deduced that in individuals who have had depression experiences a signalling protein is located in certain areas. This is called Gs Alpha and also responsible for the effects of neurotransmitters, nervous breakdown and hysteria.
This protein in the brain is believed to help researchers test out on a person to see depression symptoms and it could be used as depression biomarker. In addition to this, developing this test will determine whether the antidepressant treatment have positive effects or not and will reduce the problems of long term treatments.
Good news for patients
Mark Rasenick says that this study helps many people who suffer from malpractices and wrong diagnoses. He adds: “during our studies on rats and mature brains, we have found out that antidepressant drugs help Gs Alpha change its location and it hereby becomes more efficient communication among components of neurotransmitters.
What is more, it could explain why these drug treatments take long time to help. Surely, this study is very important and it has become a hope for the patients who are fed up with using drugs everyday, long treatments.
Rasenick and his team are improving their findings on this research to reach their goals. And bear in mind that, there is always a hope. Do not let depression blind us to see this fact.
For more information about researcher Mark Rasenick: