Etiology of Depression
Levels of Analysis
By Michael Hsiao, Edward Kim, and
Jinna Kim

“Depression is a heterogeneous disorder with a highly variable course, and inconsistent response to treatment, and no established mechanism” – Belmaker & Agam, 2008

The author has mentioned that stress “unifies all of the factors contributing to depression”.

Biological Level of Analysis
• Genes
• Sleep patterns
• Hormone/neurotransmitter imbalances
• Poor diet
• Lack of proper exercise

Cognitive Level of Analysis
• Cognitive style
• Reformulated helplessness theory (Butcher et al., 2007) – Negative attribution style

Socio-cultural Level of Analysis
• Marital problems
• Being a female
• Parental maltreatment
• Poverty
• War
• Grieving a Loss
• Discrimination and Prejudice
• Aging Populations

• Sometimes these risk factors are not the cause of depression, but depression is the case of these risk factors. They are bidirectional.

Neighborhood Effect
• Research shows that neighborhoods contribute to depression (Cutrona, Wallace, and Wesner (2006)
• Specific kinds of living conditions in the neighborhood increase stress.

Cutrona, Russell, and Brown (2005)
• Aim: to investigate whether living under adverse neighborhood conditions was correlated with two factors, negative life stressors and the personality type of negative emotionality.

Cutrona, Russell, and Brown (2005)
• Results: They found that the most important neighborhood variables were economic disadvantage and social disorder. As these two variables correlated with each other, they were used as the definition of important neighborhood characteristics.

Effort-driven reward system
• The use of antidepressants has increased
• But the depression rate has also increased
• Antidepressants work about 60% of the time and placebos work about 47% of the time.

Lambert (2008)
• Aim: to investigate whether depressive symptoms were related to a specific brain circuit.

Lambert (2008)
• Results: The results showed that worker rats worked on opening the toy 60% longer and attempted the task 30% more often that the trust fund rats. Findings suggest learned helplessness.

Techno-brain Burnout
• Technology has the power to reshape the neural network.
• Using technology has positive and negative affects on human behavior.
• “The continuous use of computers has caused our brain to be in a state of continuous partial attention adding much more stress.” – Small &
Vorgan, 2008