in patients with depression will experience cognitive deficits in several aspects, but the most common of them is memory disorders.
Depressed patients often complain about short-term or even long-term memory loss, which may mean that they have forgotten the information they have just read, the words they have just heard, or the things they have just been told.
Depression and memory disorders can affect patients' daily life, including their performance at work and their close relationship with others.
Under the new concept psychology expert Professor Rong Xinqi will talk to you about the reasons and effects of depression leading to memory loss, and how to treat it.
Causes of depression leading to memory loss in patients
No one knows exactly why depression leads to memory loss, but some theories have surfaced.
In the past few decades, it has been believed that people with depression will lead to memory disorders due to age, mental illness or because they have no motivation to keep their memories (depression is well known to also lead to lack of motivation). However, due to a deeper understanding of brain and brain specificity, most of these theories have now been abandoned. People with depression have cognitive deficiencies.
Now, people know that depression actually causes memory disorders. With more modern research, it is found that in depression, some parts of the brain that are related to memory are physically damaged. Scientific research shows that patients with depression have partial atrophy of their brains, which may lead to cognitive impairment , causing memory and recall problems.
Professor Rong said that inattention may also affect memory deficits (which is also common in depression).
It is also important to be aware that some medications used to treat depression may also have side effects of memory disorders. In addition, drug and alcohol abuse can cause or worsen memory recall function.
Effects of depression and memory loss
Depression and memory disorders can affect people in many ways. For example, the impact on individuals includes:
forgetting the specific word he wants to use ( aphasia );
forgetting what happened yesterday's conversation;
forgetting what happened in a book I have read recently;
has problems with " working memory " (when many things need to be saved in memory at the same time);
don't remember the details of some things they have done in the past, etc.
Normally, daily affairs will not be forgotten, and skills will not be forgotten, but verbal memory may be particularly affected by depression.
Professor Rong said that memory disorders exist in all age groups, but are often more serious among the elderly. Depression and memory loss in the elderly are sometimes ignored by doctors because memory loss is also a symptom of aging and Alzheimer's disease.
Treatment of depression and memory loss
There is no specific treatment for memory loss in patients with depression, but there are three methods that are common to the treatment of cognitive deficits in several mental and mental illness standards:
1. Practice and practice (remediation technology): For example, a mobile app designed to exercise and improve memory.
2. Learn different memory methods (compensatory skills): such as learning to use simple or special memory skills.
3. Environment changes (adaptive methods): For example, memory auxiliary tools, such as a recorder that can record current events at any time for future memory.
