The 5 psychological causes of depression, and its symptoms

depressive disorders they form one of the most popular diagnostic categories. There are many people who, when feeling psychologically ill, say they are "depressed" and who, in In general, they use this concept as if it were used to name the simple discomfort that goes beyond pain physical.

But sadness and depression far from being the same. The second is a disorder that must be diagnosed and that, in part, does not depend on the situations we are experiencing in our work, family context, or leisure time.

There are many factors that can lead to the development of this kind of disorder; from the biochemical imbalances of the nervous system to which genetics predisposes, to the past learning and the way to evoke memories that have to do with our trajectory vital. Next we will focus on this second type of reasons, psychological causes of depression.

The psychology behind depression

It is clear that all psychological causes are also biological in some sense. After all, in order not to be one, we would have to accept that our mind is something separate from the body, an idea totally discarded by science and that only corresponds to the 

philosophical dualism.

However, when we refer to the fact that there are psychological causes of depression, we are talking about a type of pathological root that, although it occurs within the human organism, not only depends on the simple expression of genes and of innate characteristics, but to understand it, one must consider the way in which interaction with the environment influences this biology.

Thus, the fact of having seen many close friends and relatives die during childhood is something that can only happen if we have a system nervous system capable of processing these experiences and accepting them as highly stressful and traumatic moments, but at the same time there is a component that it has to do with what happens in the environmentoutside of oneself. Unlike imbalances in neurotransmitter production levels that have genetic causes, in this case our life experiences matter.

So… what are those psychological causes of depression? Next we will see the main ones.

1. pessimistic bias

There are ways of interpreting reality that lead us to constantly make a pessimistic reading of the facts. For example, if we believe that all our apparent achievements are due to luck and that all our failures are the result of innate characteristics that will always be in us and we will not be able to change, this contributes to our being more exposed to bad experiences.

It is, therefore, facts that have to do with our style of attribution (the way in which we elaborate explanations about what happens), but also with the way in which we establish predictions about what is going to happen to us. pass.

2. Lack of stimulation

One of the characteristics of depression is that under its effects people they become devoid of initiative and, in many cases, they are not even capable of experiencing pleasure (a phenomenon known as anhedonia). This has led some researchers to hypothesize that one of the psychological causes of depression is a lack of positive reinforcements (something like rewards for carrying out actions), after having gone through a period in which the person has become accustomed to them.

For example, if at the end of university we find that we no longer have an exciting project that motivates us and gives us small rewards On a day-to-day basis, we may have trouble finding new motivations and, after a while, this leads us to stagnation. emotional.

3. attention management problems

This psychological cause of depression is closely linked to the first, and has to do with the tendency of our attentional focus to always focus on those events that make us feel bad. In certain contexts, people can learn to focus all your attention on what is painful, sad or hopeless, as if there was a feeling of morbid fascination for them. In this way, little by little the content of the thoughts becomes fixed in unpleasant experiences.

In addition, this partial vision of reality makes us live in a very distorted world that, furthermore, it does not change when the facts send us signals that the world is not such a dark place as we believe. As we will have learned to focus our attention on the worst, also these contradictory facts will be unconsciously manipulated to fit our vision of reality, as happened, for example, in the case of youtuber Marina Joyce.

4. Traumas linked to the past

Traumatic experiences, especially those that have to do with events that occurred during childhood (a vital stage in which we are especially sensitive to experiences) can leave a mark that is difficult to erase and that, with the passage of time, will generate a chain reaction that leads us to depression.

For example, having killed a pet by accident can seriously damage self-esteem, create an aversion to the possibility of creating new affective ties and make those traumatic memories appear as intrusive images at any time, making the onset of depressive symptoms more likely. The same could happen, for example, in cases of sexual abuse during childhood.

However, it should be noted that everything depends on the way in which these memories are interpreted and situations, since those experiences, by themselves, do not have to trigger depression in any way. deterministic.

• Related article: "Psychic traumas: concept, realities... and some myths"

5. Tendency to obsessive thinking

The need to make our lives fit perfectly with certain mental schemes is a characteristic of an obsessive style of thinking that, in addition to leading towards the constant perfectionism, can increase the risk of experiencing depression. The reason is that life hardly fits these expectations of perfection.