Depression: Is it all in the mind?

Claude Monet's painting of his dying wife Camille

Clinical depression is something that isn't that much explored here in the Philippines. Sometimes, people just use the term colloquially saying they are "depressed" with a meaning that they are sad or heartbroken or feeling under the weather. Maybe you have used the term to refer to those moods as well. However, because of this, people who are clinically depressed almost always end up getting judged to be just "dramatic" or being "irresponsible" when they are experiencing the bouts of depression. Sometimes, we just assume it is temporary and tell them to cheer up or worse, tell them that there are worse things in life and they should think of their problem in comparison to others. I've recently witnessed three people who were/are depressed and it isn't something they can just snap out of.

Depressed people often report seeing the world as a dull, grey world. You can often see these dark, somber colors being used by artists in their works and paintings depicting sadness and depression. It isn't actually just an artistic representation. Studies showed that there are biological reasoning behind these phenomena.

Depression actually affects your visual perception by affecting cognitive functioning. Bubl and his coworkers (2010) found that people who were depressed had an impaired contrast perception as opposed to healthy individuals. The study showed that the depressed participants were less able to detect contrast differences in black and white checkerboard patterns shown to them. This was shown through the electrical recordings of their retinal activities measured through electrodes attached near the participants' eyes. The more severe the depression, the less were the electrical responses of their retina to contrasts. Antidepressants and other medications didn't make a difference on the results of the study.

This study is actually very helpful in the future assessment of depression among individuals. These electrical responses provide psychiatrists with more objective means of measurement for depression and its severity among those affected with it. Having this dulled contrast perception can prolong the depressive state of the individual and can feed into the depressed person's mood.

References:

Bubl E., Kern, E., Ebert, D., Bach, M., and Tebartz van Elst, L. (2010). Seeing Gray When Feeling Blue? Depression Can Be Measured in the Eye of the Diseased. Retrieved November 2012 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/34591834/Seeing-Gray-When-Feeling-Blue-Depression-Can-Be-Measured-in-the-Eye-of-the-Diseased

Larance, J. (2010). Depression really does make everything look grey. In The Independent. Retrieved November 2012 from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/depression-really-does-make-everything-look-grey-2031296.html