By Laura Cummings
At any given time, almost three million Canadians are experiencing serious depression, according to the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario.
Dr. Hymie Anisman, a Neuroscience professor and Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience at Carleton University, is assessing exactly how stressful events can lead to a disorder that affects an estimated 10 to 15 per cent of men, and 15 to 25 per cent women in Canada.
Aside from the toll that major depression takes on families and individuals, Anisman says that depressive illnesses consume more financial resources than any other pathology. Depression is also the second-most frequent illness to afflict Canadians, he adds. “From the practical side”, he says, “there’s a need to study this”.
He’s exploring a variety of topics related to stressful experiences ranging from how university students cope with major life transitions, the impact of abuse, the long-term ramifications of early-life trauma and the impact of traumatic events experienced in adulthood. As well, Anisman has been assessing how the immune system and the brain interact, and how immunological challenges might come to instigate disturbed mood states.
Anisman says his research mainly explores how the body and brain react to certain stressful factors or situations, and how these responses translate into pathological states. He also looks at why some people are very resilient to different stressors, while others are more at risk. His work spans animals studies, research involving university students, community participants, clinical patients, and he and his team evaluate biological processes that might occur in the brain of depressed individuals that had died by suicide versus non-depressed individuals that had died by causes other than sucide.
“What we do is try to figure out how and why stress has the effects that it does, determine who’s most vulnerable, and what do about it,” Anisman says. “Given that stress has this direct link to illness, the importance is to reduce bad effects that happen to people dealing with stresses, and how to avoid (them).”
Currently, Anisman is involved in several different studies examining depression, with funding from organizations like the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).