How could stress lead to major depressive disorder?

Abstract

Stress is associated with major depressive disorder (MDD), but the underlying mechanism remains elusive. However, some experiences, referred to as stress, may actually lead to resilience. It is thus critical first to define what type of stress may lead to MDD. Long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) are both sensitive to stress, but particularly to inescapable and not escapable stress. Thus, these are the psychological aspects of stress which contribute to the development of MDD, but by which mechanisms remains still elusive. Interestingly, the same stress may facilitate LTD and impair LTP in the CA1 region. In addition, repeated efforts are often required for learning under neutral conditions but single- or few learning trials are sufficient for forming stress-related memories. If LTP is crucial for normal learning, a combination of limited LTP and facilitated LTD appears to have higher efficiency for storing stress-related memories. Chronic psychological stress may cause a hyper-link among stress-related memories across the spatiotemporal due to shared quality of inescapability, leading to automatically negative appraisal through memory generalization mechanisms in MDD patients when encountering new distinct events which are perceived to share such similarity with previous experiences.

Stress – (self) eating: Epigenetic regulation of autophagy in response to psychological stress

“…The term “stress” was coined to define the response of an organism to stressors believed to be harmful for health . Since then, numerous studies have successfully dissected the differences between the physiological and psychological aspects of stress and the distinct neurobiological responses of the two . Early life stress, be it physiological or psychological, has been implicated as a major risk factor in the development of psychiatric disorders.…”

“…Early life stress, be it physiological or psychological, has been implicated as a major risk factor in the development of psychiatric disorders. Epidemiological and clinical studies demonstrate a strong correlation between childhood adversity, stress and depressive symptoms, more specifically, MDD . MDD is a highly prevalent debilitating condition, with symptoms including mood fluctuations, anhedonia, weight changes, feelings of worthlessness, and suicidal tendencies among many others .…”

Validation of a Psychosocial Chronic Stress Model in the Pig Using a Multidisciplinary Approach at the Gut-Brain and Behavior Levels

“…Depression is also highly associated with other mood disorders (e.g., anxiety), coronary, metabolic (e.g., diabetes, obesity) and gastrointestinal disorders (e.g., irritable bowel syndrome) comorbidities (Kennedy et al, 2012; Yang et al, 2015; Joseph and Golden, 2017). One of the leading risk factor for depression is psychological chronic stress (Caspi, 2003), which includes a notion of inescapability and/or uncontrollability (Richter-Levin and Xu, 2018).…”

Transpersonal Gratitude, Emotional Intelligence, Life Contentment, and Mental Health Risk Among Adolescents and Young Adults

“…These factors are social support (Harandi et al, 2017), financial stability (Brackertz et al, 2020;Shippee et al, 2019), and sense of security (Daneshnejad & Matin, 2016). Psychological factors like resilience (Gloria & Steinhardt, 2016;Rutten et al, 2013), self-reflection (Philippi & Koenigs, 2014), personal growth (Gamme & Eriksson, 2018;Lauveng et al, 2016), self-regulation (Calam & Bee, 2018;Woodward et al, 2017), and optimism (Fatima et al, 2019;Yuan & Wang, 2016 (Belleau et al, 2019;Richter-Levin & Xu, 2018;Xin et al, 2015), mood and anxiety disorders (Lee et al, 2019;Syed & Nameroff, 2017), and substance use disorder (Carey, 2018;McHugh et al, 2020). The assessment for mental health risk in proposed study would be such that higher the degree of depression, anxiety, and stress higher will be the mental health risk.…”