Depression and cardiovascular disease are increasingly being recognized as risk factors for one another. Just like smoking and high cholesterol levels increase one's likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease, so can the diagnosis of depression. Additionally, the risk of developing depression in the first year following a cardiac arrest is dramatically greater than in the general population, going from 1 in 20 in the general population to 1 in 3 after a cardiac arrest.
Depression places a great deal of stress on the body. It may cause levels of stress hormones to increase, leading to increases in cholesterol, blood sugar levels, and arterial plaques. Depression can impact clotting factors, heart rate and rhythm, and blood pressure level, all of which lead to increased chances for cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrest.
Treatment of depression in patients with known heart disease or known family histories of cardiovascular disease becomes even more critical for those reasons. Many antidepressants have been studied to determine their safety in cardiac patients after a heart attack and have been found to be as safe as in the general population.
Some research has demonstrated that some antidepressants like the SSRIs may also directly cause platelet inhibition much like aspirin, thus adding another protective measure aside from their antidepressant effects. Currently, studies are underway to demonstrate whether treating depression lowers the rate of recurrent heart attacks, as preliminary studies have suggested. Its these reasons therefore , it is imperative to get your family member into treatment if depression is suspected if he or she has cardiovascular disease or after a cardiac arrest.
Pseudodementia is a term that is applied to older patients who initially give their doctors complaining of memory problems but result in have depression. Many similarities exist between patients with dementia and pseudodementia, including apathy, anhedonia, energy disturbance, and sleep and appetite disturbances. In general, however, patients struggling with dementia don't overly complain about their poor memory.
In fact, many are completely unaware that they have memory problems. Instead, they frequently accuse others of "playing using their heads" because they misplaced something and believe that someone has had it. Patients with pseudodementia often complain bitterly about their loss of memory and sometimes refer to themselves as "losing their minds" or "becoming demented."
When tests of memory are performed in these patients, however, they demonstrate normal memory. The onset of the memory loss also varies, with patients suffering from pseudodementia having a more rapid start of memory loss than those struggling with dementia. How come depression affect memory? Depression often leads to ruminations, which is a constant turning over of the identical internal thoughts and feelings one can experience when suffering from depression.When locked into ruminations, it's very hard to attend to the outside world.
In addition, whenever you attempt to concentrate, the energy necessary for concentration results in quick fatigue, causing you to be drawn back into your ruminations more easily. When attention and concentration are lost, the ability to input new memories is lost, and for that reason, you experience this as a lack of memory. Although pseudodementia can be caused by depression, it can also be brought on by prescription medications; even medications as seemingly benign as ibuprofen have been discovered to cause cognitive problems in the older population.
Depression is four times more likely to occur in patients over 65 years than in those younger than 65 years. The rates of dementia increase with age as well. Clearly, the speed of depression among patients with dementia is very high, with approximately 20% to 30% of Alzheimer's patients suffering from depression in addition to their dementia.
The link between dementia and pseudodementia was once regarded as weaker than considered now, and also the diagnosis might actually be a harbinger for the development of dementia afterwards, although not from direct causation, but rather because the dementia may first present as depression in some cases. In this age group, it is easy to dismiss symptoms as normal aging or like a normal reaction to the existence of multiple physical problems. This really is very damaging because the risk of suicide increases with age, particularly in men. As most patients with pseudodementia respond well to treatment, identification and treatment of pseudodementia is imperative.
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