If you hit your head real hard and feel blue later, it might be more than regular sadness. It could be a different type of depression.
This comes from a new study by Dr. Shan Siddiqi and his team. They work at a hospital that is part of the Mass General Brigham health care system.
What Does It Mean?
What’s the big deal here? Well, according to Dr. Siddiqi, a knock to the head can mess up brain circuits and lead to depression. But this isn’t the usual type of depression. So, we may need to treat it differently.
Doctors have long thought that this might be a unique type of depression. It has its own set of symptoms and doesn’t respond well to regular anti-depression medicines. Now, Dr. Siddiqi’s study is giving us some solid proof.
The Brainy Team
To do this study, Dr. Siddiqi teamed up with experts from Washington University in St. Louis, Duke University School of Medicine, the University of Padua, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
This study started seven years ago. Dr. Siddiqi was inspired by a patient he was treating with Dr. David Brody. They noticed something unusual in the brain maps of people with brain injuries and depression.
The Study in a Nutshell
For this study, they looked at 273 adults who had hurt their heads badly. These injuries came from sports, car accidents, or the military.
They compared these people to others who were either healthy, depressed without a brain injury, or had post-traumatic stress disorder.
The team took detailed brain scans of these people. The scans looked at how oxygen moved in the brain.
The data from these scans was crunched by a smart computer program. This program made a unique map of each person’s brain.
The Interesting Find
In people with brain injuries and depression, the brain circuit linked to depression was in the same place as in healthy folks.
But the way it was acting was different. In regular depression, this circuit was less active. But in those with brain injuries, it was more active.
So, the team came up with a new name for this type of depression: “TBI affective syndrome”.
According to Dr. Brody, this is not the same as regular depression or other mental health problems. There’s still a lot we need to figure out. But this study is a big step forward.
What’s Next?
One problem with this study is the sheer amount of data. The team couldn’t look at every detail of each patient.
In the future, they want to study patients’ behaviors more closely. They also want to figure out different types of mental issues linked to brain injuries.
Based on this study, Dr. Siddiqi and Dr. Brody are working on new treatments. They’ve already done a small test with a therapy that targets specific brain areas in people with brain injuries and depression.
It was a success. They now have money to try it out on a larger scale with military folks.
According to Dr. Rajendra Morey, a co-author of the study, they hope their work will lead to better ways of treating depression in people with mild brain injuries.
It might even help doctors step in early and stop chronic symptoms from developing in those who’ve had head traumas.
If you care about health, please read studies about scientists find a core feature of depression and this metal in the brain strongly linked to depression.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about drug for mental health that may harm the brain, and results showing this therapy more effective than ketamine in treating severe depression.
The study was published in Science Translational Medicine.
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