Stressors are all around us, causing us to feel like we never get a break and that we will never catch up. Particularly stressful events, such as getting terminated from your job or losing a loved one, are well known triggers for depression. This clear link between emotions like stress and depression has prompted a number of scientific studies, which found that there may be much more connecting the two emotions than we had previous realized.

What most people don’t realize is that stress is not just effecting you on an emotional level. It is actually causing physical changes to your brain that lead directly to depression. Stressors affect the homeostasis, or balance, in your brain that allows it to function properly. Chemicals called neurotransmitters travel throughout your brain, affecting and regulating your mood and your actions. Dopamine is one of the neurotransmitters that stimulates your brain, effecting your mood and causing feelings of reward and gratification. It is an important part of what allows you to feel pleasure. Serotonin is another neourotransmitter, which causes feelings of happiness and well-being. When something hinders the ability of dopamine and serotonin to get to your brain, it can lead to serious feelings of sadness and depression. When you have constant feelings of stress putting pressure on your brain, there is a significant decrease in your levels of serotonin and dopamine and an increase in chemicals like cortisol, which contribute to further stress. This shift in the chemistry of your brain leaves you unable to properly regulate your mood and energy levels, leading to both continued stress and serious depression. In fact, prolonged stress causes the same changes to the brain that episodes of depression do, so the two emotions feed each other on a chemical level.

Stress also causes changes in your nervous system. Stress also damages neurons in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that regulates long term memory. However, stress actually strengthens a part of your brain called the amygdala. By no means this is a “good” thing.  The reason is that activity in the amygdala often causes sadness, anxiety, and fear. Because stress causes this part of your brain to get stronger, it greatly increases negative feelings, like anxiety, and can even make you more likely to develop an anxiety disorder.  Its really like training a bad muscle.

While stress can cause depression and anxiety in anyone, young people are particularly susceptible to this kind of response to depression. The frontal lobe is the part of your brain that deals with regulating emotions, making decisions, and other higher functions of the brain. Because this part of your brain does not fully develop until age 25, young people are particularly likely to experience changes in their frontal lobe. Extreme or long term stress causes these neurons, which allow neurotransmitters to flow through your brain, to atrophy. While this can have a number of consequences, including seriously impaired judgement, it also causes an increased likelihood of depression and other mood disorders.

In short, it is wise to be aware that stress can cause serious depression which in turn can give rise to anger and other mental afflictions.  Awareness if your key to looking for solutions.

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A traumatic brain injury is commonly referred to as a concussion. While not all blows to the head result in a concussion, many, especially severe ones, do. Any strong impact to the head can cause traumatic brain injury, but the symptoms and severity vary from person to person and from incident to incident. The immediate symptoms include loss of consciousness, post-traumatic amnesia, and disorientation. These symptoms will fade in all but the most severe of cases, but the damage sustained by the brain can also lead to lasting psychological effects, including outbursts of anger and depression.

Many patients who have undergone a traumatic brain injury will experience episodes of anger and depression as a part of the normal recovery process. This occurs because the area of the brain that regulates emotions will often undergo trauma during a head injury that does not allow it to function properly. Luckily, this is usually not a sign of permanent brain damage and the severe mood swings will fade as this part of the brain heals. Up to 66% of recovering concussion patients report increased irritability, with 63% reporting feelings of depression. These outbursts will sometimes not surface until several weeks after the initial trauma, despite being a direct result of injury to the brain.

Generally, mood swings and negative emotions resulting from a brain trauma will fade naturally within three to six months. Your doctor will probably monitor you during this period to insure your recovery is going well, but additional treatment is not usually required to alleviate these psychological symptoms. However, the anger and depression caused by a concussion can be quite severe and may serious affect your life. Many patients feel like they have completely lost control of their emotions after experiencing a concussion. If this is the case, there are treatment options available to help calm these psychological issues while your brain recovers. It’s important to remember that this is a normal part of your recovery and allow yourself time to slowly reintegrate yourself back in to your normal routine.

However, if you are experiencing long lasting emotional issues that began after receiving a traumatic brain injury, consult with a physician or psychiatrist. Unfortunately, anger and depression resulting from a concussion often goes undiagnosed as the cause is unable to be determined, but there are specific features of the nature of this anger that can help you pinpoint the cause. The rage that results from brain trauma differs from normal anger in that the rages are often without cause irrational, and cannot be tempered by reason. If you experience severe negative emotions after the traditional recovery period has expired, your doctor will likely prescribe medication that will alleviate your symptoms and allow you to resume your normal life.

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One of the most interesting things psychologists have discovered is that depression and anger often feed each other, creating a cycle of negative emotions. The root cause of both anger and depression is stress and negativity. Generally, when something harms or provokes a person, the natural response is anger. Anger is not necessarily a negative emotion, and there are ways to properly deal with anger. However, when angry, most people will either lash out or bottle up the anger. There is a lot of pressure on people in modern society to not express anger, even in a healthy fashion, so people end up repressing their negative emotions rather than dealing with them.

The repression of this anger and other emotions is often the cause of depression. All of that anger turns inward, so instead of attacking the problem, you begin to attack yourself. You begin to focus on your own faults and failures and pull yourself down. Carol Landau, a clinical professor of psychiatry and medicine at Brown University School of Medicine in Rhode Island, studied this phenomenon and noted that the tendency to transform repressed anger in to depression is particularly prevalent in children. She found that when children have issues in their home life that prevent them from expressing and dealing with their emotions in a healthy way, they end up internalizing these emotions. This repressed anger then resurfaces as depression later in life.

Several studies have been done about the differences in the relationship between anger and depression in men and women. In a study entitled Anger and Depression in Girls and Boys: A Study of Gender Differences, psychologists found that while girls do suppress anger more frequently than males, they did not find increased levels of depression in the girls. Carol Landau’s work, however, would suggest that the girls would not experience depression until later in life. It is often thought that because it is less acceptable for women to voice their anger, they are more inclined to internalize that anger and become depressed. However, Landau found that this depression in women can be easily treated by allowing them to open up.

Unfortunately, the relationship between depression and anger is often a cyclical one, making it difficult to break away and receive help. Once repressed anger has led to depression, one often becomes withdrawn, unhappy, and easier to provoke, leading to more anger. This anger is either repressed, leading directly to more depression, or used to lash out, causing the individual to become further withdrawn. Once anger and depression have started feeding each other, it is very difficult to break that cycle.  Yet not impossible, make sure to seek qualified help tp help you get out of the rut.

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Unfortunately, anger has become so common of a emotion, and expression of all humans, that it does not seem out of the norm (in most situations) for people to react in such a way. For instance, did you know that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not actually list  anger as a sign of depression? Why not? Perhaps of its common occurrence, not only with other possible disorders, but also with pure human nature. So what does all this have to do with depression?

Well, some would suggest that “depression is anger turned inward”, as the saying goes. While there are of course many causes of depression, anger is certainly a highly possible one, though most likely lingers at an unconscious level. For instance, often times life events (perhaps not finding a job, family stresses, money problems) that could create anger in us may linger and build over a long period of time. If that anger is not expressed in a healthy manner, it will grow into a very negative state of depression and helplessness. Feeling like you do not have any control, or ability to change a negative situation can be extremely frustrating, which is why if it is not confronted will start to build pressure of locked up emotions, almost like a brewing volcano.

Just remember that it is alright if you get down in the dumps once in a while, or feel a little angry sometimes, life happens. What is important is how you deal with it. Try to be aware of how you are feeling about things, and find techniques that work for you to help express any possible anger in a healthy manner (talking to friends, or working through whats frustrating etc). As the wise old saying goes, life is 20% what happens to you, and 80% how you deal with it.