Anxiety Present since Babyhood?
In lieu of Sarah's recent blog post about Type-A Personalities managing their anxiety, and the NYT article "Understanding Anxiety" I wanted to see what others in the Depression & Anxiety community thought about the origins of Anxiety.
In the very long NYT article, the theory is that, basically, anxiety comes from an overactive amygdala and the environment triggers that set it off. Babies with overactive amygdalas were very responsive to certain situations while others were not. And it seems, more often than not, these anxious babies grow up to be anxious, panic-ridden adults.
In Sarah's blog she describes the relationship between eldest child syndrome, type-a personalities, and anxiety. And I think the connection really highlights the notion that the way you look at the world really affects the way the world impacts you. If your worldview is clouded or piqued by a worrier's perspective (or a hyper-critical, uber-sensitive, over-reactive perspective) you probably realize that, in your own life, these symptoms or personality traits have been around since you were little.
I'm curious how many people in the community can think back to childhood and see foreshadowing for their current mental anguish. It is a chicken-or-the-egg argument: which came first - anxiety or being a perfectionist? Depression or analytical mind?
What have you heard about the connection between the amygdala and depression & anxiety?
What are others in your online community discussing when it comes to predisposition in combination with anxiety and environmental triggers?
What studies would you like to see done in the mental health community to pinpoint childhood symptoms?
Have you pursued a certain career goal or personal hobbies that directly benefit from your depression or anxious mind?
Have you found connections to others with similar brain chemistry?
When does an overactive amygdala help us?
When does it hurt us?
What trends have you noticed in your communities that support or disprove these ideas?
In the very long NYT article, the theory is that, basically, anxiety comes from an overactive amygdala and the environment triggers that set it off. Babies with overactive amygdalas were very responsive to certain situations while others were not. And it seems, more often than not, these anxious babies grow up to be anxious, panic-ridden adults.
In Sarah's blog she describes the relationship between eldest child syndrome, type-a personalities, and anxiety. And I think the connection really highlights the notion that the way you look at the world really affects the way the world impacts you. If your worldview is clouded or piqued by a worrier's perspective (or a hyper-critical, uber-sensitive, over-reactive perspective) you probably realize that, in your own life, these symptoms or personality traits have been around since you were little.
I'm curious how many people in the community can think back to childhood and see foreshadowing for their current mental anguish. It is a chicken-or-the-egg argument: which came first - anxiety or being a perfectionist? Depression or analytical mind?
What have you heard about the connection between the amygdala and depression & anxiety?
What are others in your online community discussing when it comes to predisposition in combination with anxiety and environmental triggers?
What studies would you like to see done in the mental health community to pinpoint childhood symptoms?
Have you pursued a certain career goal or personal hobbies that directly benefit from your depression or anxious mind?
Have you found connections to others with similar brain chemistry?
When does an overactive amygdala help us?
When does it hurt us?
What trends have you noticed in your communities that support or disprove these ideas?
Tags: anxiety, babies, childhood, depression, health, mental, perfectionism, studies
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dianne Rees on -
The amygdala is one of the first players in the fear response. This response is not necessarily a bad thing. Acute or short-term stress can make you function better in emergency situations, like when you're chased by angry dinosaurs, likely to be hit by a car, need perform on a school exam,etc The hypothalamus, along with the pituitary and adrenal glands are other important parts of the stress response. The problem happens when these areas of the brain are chronically active.
Studies suggest that when a person has multiple key gene mutations and then is subjected to life stressors, risk for psychiatric symptoms associated with major depressive disorder (MDD) increases. The serotonin transporter gene is an example of a gene linked to the development of MDD.
According to one theory, when stressors occur in childhood, if you're genetically susceptible, your brain can become sensitized, resulting in a vulnerability to psychiatric symptoms associated with adult depression. In other words, if you are subject to severe stressors as a child, it may be harder for you to bounce back as an adult.
When sensitized adult brains are then subjected to stress, psychiatric symptoms associated with depression are more likely to develop.
Perhaps, not surprisingly given how complex human behavior and emotions are, there are multiple regions of the brain implicated in the symptoms we associate with depression and anxiety. A "short" list is below:
**Subgenual cingulate and ventral prefrontal cortex: depressed mood, feelings of
failure or ugliness, guilt, self-hate, punishment and self-blame, and suicidal ideation
** Striatum and cerebellum (areas associated with motor control): fatigue4
** Striatum: psychomotor retardation
** Nucleus accumbens (a key regulator of response to reward, including the pleasure
received from drugs of abuse): loss of interest or pleasure
** Hypothalamus (histamine neurons): loss of sexual interest, sleep alterations, and in
an animal model, also loss of appetite
**Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus:problems concentrating
**Amygdala (a structure associated with the experience of fear and emotion): anxious
symptoms and suicidal ideation
Some references:
Mullen PE, Martin JL, Anderson JC, et al. The long-term impact of the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of children: a community study. Child Abuse Negl. 1996;20:7-21
Vythilingam M, Heim C, Newport J, et al. Childhood trauma associated with smaller hippocampal volume in women with major depression. Am J Psychiatry. 2002;159:2072-2080.
Kendler KS, Karkowski LM, Prescott CA. Causal relationship between stressful life events and the onset of major depression. Am J Psychiatry. 1999;156:837-841.
Nestler EJ, Barrot M, DiLeone RJ, et al. Neurobiology of depression. Neuron. 2002;34:13-25.
Carr DB, Wool C, Lydiard RB, et al. Rate-sensitive inhibition of ACTH release in depression. Am J Psychiatry.
1984;141:590-592.
Rupprecht R, Kornhuber J, Wodarz N, et al. Disturbed glucocorticoid receptor autoregulation and corticotropin
response to dexamethasone in depressives pretreated with metyrapone. Biol Psychiatry. 1991;29:1099-1109.
Himmerich H, Zimmermann P, Ising M, et al. Changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and leptin
levels during antidepressant treatment. Neuropsychobiol. 2007;55:28-35.
Ohl F, Michaelis T, Vollmann-Honsdorf GK, et al. Effect of chronic psychosocial stress and long-term
cortisol treatment on hippocampus-mediated memory and hippocampal volume: a pilot-study in tree
shrews. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2000;25:357-363.
Szeszko PR, Betensky JD, Mentschel C, et al. Increased stress and smaller anterior hippocampal volume.
NeuroReport. 2006;17:1825-1828.
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Permalink Reply by Dianne Rees on
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I also think it's a tremendous challenge to treat childhood depression, which may be under-diagnosed because it's dismissed as part of a "behavioral issue" and/or because children may have difficulty articulating how they feel.
A site with some resources for parents of children suffering with depression may provide some guidance.
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Permalink Reply by amanda on -
What great responses!
I think that childhood affects nearly everything in some way. It's when we learn nearly all of skills, emotions, and habits that we employ the rest of our lives. It also seems to be the time when our genes are "set off" - when our predispositions are first tested. Some of these genes or predispositions seem to lay dormant until teenhood or early adulthood (I'm thinking more complex types of mental illness, for example) but all seem to be the product of a deeply entwined relationship between body chemicals and environment.
I wonder if, in addition to everything Slinkygirl has mentioned, children who learn to thrive off or rely on stress will also feel similar effects as was mentioned for children raised in neglectful environments. As a similar self-reliant stressor seems to be ignited, just in an opposite way. I know many people who, as children, were very stressed but not necessarily by their parents or exact circumstance but by their own ambition and the environment that encouraged it. I feel as though younger generations, especially, were the first to feel the need to overachieve as children. Perhaps because we, overall, were exposed to so much more information than past generations (due to the increased mass media, embarrassment of riches, internet, etc) - so I can only imagine how future generations will deal with things.
The work we do now (even as children) is so internal. It's no longer physical play or mechanical construction - it's very electronic and technologically-based play/work - which puts a lot of pressure on our minds. Because the "world" is so accessible, we are now exposed to many more ideas - which, frankly, makes living simply and effectively quite difficult. When we were confined to our own homes and worked within our family's particular craft we had a lot less to consider and worry about. Our worries were more visceral - happiness wasn't as philosophical a concept, it seems. I tend to think that the institution of the "liberal arts education" helps to push the sort of thinking that both comes from, and perpetuates analytical, perception. Even since the "confessional writers" of the 50s and 60s and the burgeoning field of psychiatry/psychology there has been a lot more discourse around emotion itself. And the more you focus on something, the bigger it becomes. The more you notice about the world or your place in it - certainly the more likely you will be to worry. All of the clichés about innocence and naivete are probably true. Ignorance, at least in a functional sense, is often bliss.
Perhaps we should start young, adding a sort of "relaxation class" in addition to phys. ed. Children who are put into overstimulating environments for 6-8 hours a day (big classes with few instructors can create this) are obviously more likely to be stressed. There should also be a balance between competitive environments in school and more nurturing, fulfilling multifaceted environments. I worry that technology might back us into a corner as far as the future of education (as I've already noticed in my own life).
But these are just a few of my theories. I hope that ,as we continue to study the way the brain works chemically and the way it can be triggered environmentally, we will be able to combat all of the pervasive anxieties and depression. From your comments alone I know this is a topic worth paying attention to. And one that I hope more people will add their thoughts to.
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Permalink Reply by Dianne Rees on
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Hi Amanda: You've raised some interesting ideas about the importance of relaxation, which might be put another way when you consider children. The American Academy of Pediatrics has emphacized the importance of unstructured play time for kids, precisely because children need some time to be creative without worrying about what they need to achieve.
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Permalink Reply by Dianne Rees on
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Hi Slinkygirl,
You're right-there are so many factors that all combine that can make people vulnerable to depression. Gene variations are a very poorly understood component of the big picture and multiple genes interact to make your brain "behave" or "misbehave." The activity of these genes in turn are affected by many complex interactions with the environment which are poorly understood. My pet peeve about some health care sites is that they'll often quote from newspaper articles about medical advances vs from the original source, and that tends to translate into the impression that there's more certainty about what's known than there actually is.
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