“Our mind controls our body” is true to a great extent as a lot of people having mental illnesses have physical expressions of the same. Of all the mental illnesses it’s primarily depression and anxiety which have physical manifestations to a greater extent. Depression is a mental illness that affects the mood of people, leads to a feeling of hopelessness, reduced attention and concentration. Beyond that, it also leads to a variety of physical symptoms. Some of the physical manifestations which point towards depression are as follows:
Weight Changes: Appetite changes are most seen in depression and people can have either weight gain or weight loss. Some patients feel excessive craving for food and hence they end up gaining a significant amount of weight due to their binge eating. This increase in weight further like a ripple effect leads to various health conditions like heart disease and diabetes. On the other hand, a few people give up food completely owing to their depression and thus experience fatigue, exhaustion and other health issues.
Sleep deprivation: Insomnia is one of the most reported symptoms of depression. The patients who experience sleep deprivation for a long time start seeing effects on their cognition, experience weight gain, have cardiac manifestations and it is also reported to lead to various serious health issues like cancer.
Chronic Pain and Inflammation: Another frequently reported symptom especially in the Asian Population is chronic joint and muscle pains when people are depressed. Breast tenderness in females and headaches which can be debilitating at times are also reported by patients. In these patients, pain affects more due to decreased pain tolerance. Depressive patients also report repeated inflammations or worsening of inflammatory conditions like arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and type 2 diabetes. There is some relationship between worsening of these conditions and research is still on to figure out what causes what?
Gastric Problems: As mentioned above, eating patterns start changing in any person who is emotionally deprived or distressed. Eating problems can lead to nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and constipation. Some patients experience IBS symptoms and treatment of depression will not lead to improvement in these symptoms and treatment requires a lifestyle change. The gut is considered as the second brain so gastric problems are very commonly seen in depression, as the change in the bacteria in the gastric tract precipitate both anxiety and depression. Eating a balanced diet with probiotics can solve this issue.
Heart Disease: Change in sleeping, eating predisposes a patient to cardiac conditions as depression leads to major lifestyle changes and a sedentary lifestyle.
Sexual health problems: The major treatment of infertility as explained by most of the experts is destressing the couple. Depression is seen to affect the libido of people, having a less pleasurable sexual life and hence the effect on fertility is seen.
Worsening of underlying chronic health issues: Diabetes, hypertension, and a lot of other chronic conditions worsen in depression. Hence, it’s mandatory to manage both things simultaneously as depressed patients are not able to follow the advised treatment plans and compliance becomes an issue due to forgetfulness.
Overexpression of physical symptoms is one of the reasons for an increase in the number of patients being reported to the psychiatrist by general physicians and there is a strong connection between physical complaints and depression.
The writer is a Consultant Psychiatrist, Masina Hospital, Mumbai.