Who is at risk for clinical depression?
Clinical depression is similar to heart disease and cancer in that everyone
is potentially at risk for each. If you have a family history of one of
these illnesses, your susceptibility increases.
This explains why some
people develop a clinical depression only after a large, stressful event,
while others develop clinical depression seemingly out of the blue.
Young adults (18-25) are more prone to depression than people in
midlife, perhaps because of the particular stressors of separating from one's
family and learning to live on one's own. Elderly people also have higher
rates of depression than people in midlife.
People who abuse alcohol may become depressed and excessive use of alcohol
often indicates that a person is "self-medicating" a depression. But alcohol
and related drugs like valium and barbiturates are themselves depressants,
and just make problems worse.
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