Depression can affect the immune system, the cardiovascular system as well as your hormones, complicating the disease further.
Read the full transcript »
Question: What are the risks associated with depression? Dr. Ziad Nahas: Because depression is booze a brain illness as well as a systemic illness. We know that depression can affect the immune system. It can affect the cardiovascular system. It can affect the hormonal system, and so all of a sudden you have a host of diseases that are either complicated by depression, or the fact that the person is there, makes them more likely to happen and then you start getting clinical symptoms that are more complex, that are on the medical stand point as well as the psychological stand point. There are often a host of physical complaints from poor energy to poor sleep to disturbance as in appetite and weight, whether weight gain or weight loss. As well as a number of other associated element that could or could not exist in terms of either increased anxiety or increased ruminations or perhaps some association with increased substance abuse. Unfortunately at the depths of the syndrome comes the risk for either suicide gestures, then suicide attempts and actually completing a suicide. And that's really one of the greatest risk that comes along with depression. If you think about it, there is about close to three quarter of a million deaths per year in the world attributed to suicide, if not more. And so, that by self gives you a scope for how seriously all these can be.
Copyright © 2005 - 2014 Healthline Networks, Inc. All rights reserved for Healthline.