Relationships as an Attorney
Being an attorney can be an extremely demanding job at times and can easily cause strain on your relationships with partners, families, or friends. Continue reading for some tips on how to foster those relationships.
Tag Archive for: High-Stress
Is your stress changing my brain?
Jaideep Bains, professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, and Toni-Lee Sterley, postdoctoral fellow in Bains’ lab and the study’s lead author.
Credit: Adrian Shellard, Hotchkiss Brain Institute.
In a new study in Nature Neuroscience, Jaideep Bains, PhD, and his team at the Cumming School of Medicine’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI), at the University of Calgary have discovered that stress transmitted from others can change the brain in the same way as a real stress does. The study, in mice, also shows that the effects of stress on the brain are reversed in female mice following a social interaction. This was not true for male mice.
“Brain changes associated with stress underpin many mental illnesses including PTSD, anxiety disorders and depression,” says Bains, professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and member of the HBI. “Recent studies indicate that stress and emotions can be ‘contagious’. Whether this has lasting consequences for the brain is not known.”
The Bains research team studied the effects of stress in pairs of male or female mice. They removed one mouse from each pair and exposed it to a mild stress before returning it to its partner. They then examined the responses of a specific population of cells, specifically CRH neurons which control the brain’s response to stress, in each mouse, which revealed that networks in the brains of both the stressed mouse and naïve partner were altered in the same way.
The study’s lead author, Toni-Lee Sterley, a postdoctoral associate in Bains’ lab said, “What was remarkable was that CRH neurons from the partners, who were not themselves exposed to an actual stress, showed changes that were identical to those we measured in the stressed mice.”
Next, the team used optogenetic approaches to engineer these neurons so that they could either turn them on or off with light. When the team silenced these neurons during stress, they prevented changes in the brain that would normally take place after stress. When they silenced the neurons in the partner during its interaction with a stressed individual, the stress did not transfer to the partner. Remarkably, when they activated these neurons using light in one mouse, even in the absence of stress, the brain of the mouse receiving light and that of the partner were changed just as they would be after a real stress.
The team discovered that the activation of these CRH neurons causes the release of a chemical signal, an ‘alarm pheromone’, from the mouse that alerts the partner. The partner who detects the signal can in turn alert additional members of the group. This propagation of stress signals reveals a key mechanism for transmission of information that may be critical in the formation of social networks in various species.
Another advantage of social networks is their ability to buffer the effects of adverse events. The Bains team also found evidence for buffering of stress, but this was selective. They noticed that in females the residual effects of stress on CRH neurons were cut almost in half following time with unstressed partners. The same was not true for males.
Bains suggests that these findings may also be present in humans. “We readily communicate our stress to others, sometimes without even knowing it. There is even evidence that some symptoms of stress can persist in family and loved ones of individuals who suffer from PTSD. On the flip side, the ability to sense another’s emotional state is a key part of creating and building social bonds.”
This research from the Bains lab indicates that stress and social interactions are intricately linked. The consequences of these interactions can be long-lasting and may influence behaviours at a later time.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Calgary. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
- Toni-Lee Sterley, Dinara Baimoukhametova, Tamás Füzesi, Agnieszka A. Zurek, Nuria Daviu, Neilen P. Rasiah, David Rosenegger, Jaideep S. Bains. Social transmission and buffering of synaptic changes after stress. Nature Neuroscience, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41593-017-0044-6
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180308143212.htm
High Functioning Depression Masks Its Dangers
I first saw a psychiatrist for my anxiety and depression as a junior in high school.
During her evaluation, she asked about my coursework. I told her that I had a 4.0 GPA and had filled my schedule with pre-AP and AP classes. A puzzled look crossed her face. She asked about my involvement in extracurricular activities. As I rattled off the long list of groups and organizations I was a part of, her frown creased further.
Finally, she set down her pen and looked at me, saying something along the lines of “You seem to be pretty high-functioning, but your anxiety and depression seem pretty severe. Actually, it’s teens like you who scare me a lot.”
Now I was confused. What was scary about my condition? From the outside, I was functioning like a perfectly “normal” teenager. In fact, I was somewhat of an overachiever.
I was working through my mental illnesses and I was succeeding, so what was the problem?
I left that appointment with a prescription for Lexapro and a question that I would continue to think about for years. The answer didn’t hit me all at once.
Instead, it came to me every time I heard a suicide story on the news saying, “By all accounts, they were living the perfect life.”
It came to me as I crumbled under pressure over and over again, doing the bare minimum I could to still meet my definition of success.
It came to me as I began to share my story and my illness with others, and I was met with reactions of “I had no idea” and “I never would have known.” It’s easy to put depression into a box of symptoms.
Even though we’re often told that mental illness comes in all shapes and sizes, I think we’re still stuck with certain “stock images” of mental health in our heads.
When we see depression and anxiety in adolescents, we see teens struggling to get by in their day-to-day lives. We see grades dropping, and we see involvement replaced by isolation. But it doesn’t always look like this.
And when we limit our idea of mental illness, at-risk people slip through the cracks.
We don’t see the student with the 4.0 GPA or the student who’s active in choir and theater or a member of the National Honor Society or the ambitious teen who takes on leadership roles in a religious youth group.
Depression can look completely different for everyone.
No matter how many times we are reminded that mental illness doesn’t discriminate, we revert back to a narrow idea of how it should manifest, and that is dangerous.
Recognizing this danger is what helped me find the answer to my question.
Watching person after person — myself included — slip under the radar of the “depression detector” made me realize where that fear comes from. My psychiatrist knew the list of symptoms, and she knew I didn’t necessarily fit them. She understood it was the reason that, though my struggles with mental illness began at age 12, I didn’t come to see her until I was 16.
If we keep allowing our perception of what mental illness looks like to dictate how we go about recognizing and treating it, we will continue to overlook people who don’t fit the mold.
We cannot keep forgetting that there are people out there who, though they may not be able to check off every symptom on the list, are heavily and negatively affected by their mental illness. If we forget, we allow their struggle to continue unnoticed, and that is pretty scary.
