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JessicaM Hernandez
Professor Daugher
UWRT 1102
23 Nov 2014

Digging Deeper into Depression and PTSD

There are some things in life that a person cannot experience without it changing them;
not always for the better and often even without their knowledge. Life goes by so fast that one
day you can look in the mirror and not even recognize yourself. This is what happened to me;
one day I looked in the mirror and realized the depressed girl looking back at me, who could
barely get out of bed every day, was not someone I recognized. The crushing weight of
depression is a hard burden to bear. I haven't always been like this though, which made me
wonder what happened that brought in the familiar stranger I now saw in the mirror. From
further reflection and sessions with one of the counselors on campus I realized my depression
stemmed from untreated PTSD. When I realized this I began to wonder about the relationship
between PTSD and Depression, was there something wrong with me? Why was it that my family
who had experienced the same traumatic events as I had are fine and yet here I am falling apart?
When I was given the opportunity to better understand my illness I took it eagerly.
There are many misconceptions about PTSD and Depression, the main ones being that
only veterans or those in war-zones can have PTSD, and that depression is over diagnosed as
people are just whiney and unable to handle the turmoils of life. Both these misconceptions could
not be further off base in fact from my research I have inferred that due to misconceptions like
the ones previously stated PTSD and Depression are significantly under-diagnosed, and as such
there are not many studies to the Mental Health Disorders Sourcebook "approximately...

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9.from which to draw conclusions. However according 5 percent of the U.S. population ages 18
and older in a given year, have a depressive disorder." There are three forms of depressive
disorders, major depressive disorder, dystonia, and manic depression also known as bipolar
disorder. According to the same sourcebook "approximately... 3.5 percent of people [ages 18 to
54] on a given year, have PTSD" (Bellenir 16-18). Though these percentages seem small but the
actual numbers equate to millions of people in America alone; this does not even include
children let alone people from other countries, and still there's not enough being done to better
understand these illnesses.
There are two main areas that research regarding PTSD and Depression focus on;
diagnosis and treatment of both illnesses. According to A Psychopharmacology Handbook for
Primary Care, "symptoms [for PTSD] usually begin within 3 months of trauma but can be
delayed 6 months or more after the event... Characteristic symptoms include hyperarousal and
intermittent autonomic hyperactivity upon exposure or re-exposure to situations reminiscent of
the original stressor" (Nemeroff 11). PTSD has also been found to be a comorbid disease
meaning it usually affects a person hand-in-hand with something else, normally depression or
some kind of substance abuse.According to the Mental Health Disorders Sourcebook,
symptoms of depression include, "empty mood, hopelessness, guilt, loss of interest/pleasure in
hobbies, decreased energy, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, appetite and/or weight loss,
thoughts of death or suicide, and persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment,
such as headaches, digestive disorders and chronic pain." As of right now there is no specific
genetic link to depression, but unlike PTSD, it does appear to be something that can be passed on
or at least make a person more susceptible to it if others around or close to them have depression.
There are two means for diagnosing depression and PTSD (Bellenir); interviews with trained

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psychologists or clinicians and self-evaluation questionnaires (all). There seem to be only two
forms of treatments for both illnesses, narcotics in the form of selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRIs) and/or sessions with a psychologist (Bellenir, Nemeroff). All this research on
what's these diseases were, their symptoms and treatment, I still didn't understand what it was
that changed inside a person to cause these illnesses. In my search to discover the answer to this
question I came upon a study done in Germany that looked into the differences in brain activity
between controls and patients with PTSD when exposed to various visual stimuli. Though the
study didn't fully answer my questionit gave me a new area of information to start looking
further into; it pointed out which areas of the brain (the occipital lobe, superior parietal lobe, the
prefrontal cortex, the temporal lobe and the amygdala) were acted differently in the patients
compared to the controls (Nemeroff 1-11). According to the Brain and Behavior: An
Introduction to Behavioral Neuroanatomy, the occipital lobe consists of Broadmanns areas
17, 18 and 19, which is a visual centered cortex, the stimulation of which can cause
hallucinations. There is a certain change that can occur in the prefrontal cortex can cause
something called Environmental Dependency Syndrome (aka EDS) in which patients adapt their
behaviors to different environments. I believe this environmental dependency syndrome is what
makes patients with PTSD or depression so hard to detect. The parietal lobe has come to be
recognized as being heavily involved with the higher cognitive functions of the brain, and
contains a map of the body and the space surrounding it. Lesions in this part of the brain due to
neurological insults can make a person seem like they have a psychiatric problem versus a
neurological problem (Boutros 37). This discovery made me wonder if there was something in
the brain that we can change or fix to cure PTSD and depression instead of just treating the
symptoms like we are now. And finally according to Brainline the amygdala controls

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information related to emotional events as well as the creation of long term memory and helps
the brain recognize danger and fear. The main difference between the effects on the brain
described in the Brain and Behavior book and the Brainline website was that the brainline
information was the result of physical damage to the brain such as head injury (What happens
when the brain is injured.). The thing that intrigued me about this though was that a lot of the
effects on the brain were similar, this then lead me to wonder how these similar effects happened
without physical damage to the brain, in cases of mental illnesses like PTSD and depression.
From all my research and my own personal experience with depression and PTSD there
were several ideas that came out of this project that really stuck home with me. The two main
things being the similarities between the effects on the brain from physical damage and mental
illnesses like PTSD and depression, the second being the parts of the brain itself, that change as a
result of mental illnesses like PTSD and depression that can be maybe be fixed if more time and
effort was put into better understanding these areas.
Though this project gave me great insights on many of my curiosities regarding my
illness it did leave several things unanswered for me, mainly what it is exactly that causes PTSD
and depression and whether there is, or a hope of there being, a more permanent cure to these
besides treating the symptoms and fighting the crushing weight. If this is something I hope to
one day continue investigating and maybe, in my future career as a biomedical engineer, be the
one to discover the cure and answers to my questions.

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Works Cited
1. Bellenir, Karen. "2.1, 10, and 25." Mental Health Disorders Sourcebook: Basic
Information about Schizophrenia, Depression,Bipolar Disorder, Panic Disorder,
Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, Phobias and Other Anxiety Disorders, Paranoia
and Other Personality Disorders, Eating Disorders, and Sleep Disorders, along
with Information about Treatment and Therapies. 3rd ed. Detroit, MI:
Omnigraphics, 2005. 16+. Print.
2. Boutros, Nashaat N., ed. "4-6." The Brain and Behavior: An Introduction to Behavioral
Neuroanatomy. Ed. David L. Clark. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Science, 1999.
33+. Print.
3. Burgmer M, Rehbein MA, Wrenger M, Kandil J, Heuft G, et al. (2013) Early Affective
Processing in Patients with Acute Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder:Magnetoencephalographic Correlates. PLoS ONE 8(8): e71289.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071289
4. Nemeroff, Charles B., and Alan F. Schatzberg. "Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders &
Insomnia." Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A
Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care. Washington, DC: American
Psychiatric, 1999. 11-14, 22-32, & 41. Print.
5. "What Happens When the Brain Is Injured?" Brain Basics. Brain Line, n.d. Web. 24 Oct.
2014.
<http://www.brainline.org/multimedia/interactive_brain/the_human_brain.html?g
clid=Cj0KEQiA7NyiBRCOhpuCm9Dq6b4BEiQA9D6qhX0MvZvmP6Qplvz5JCH8guE1jIlPWwPoUdQwfPUWFQaAvqr8P8HAQ>.