A 2000 word essay on the biological basis of depression for the 2nd year 'Biological Psychology' module.
Answering the question: 'Critically discuss the biological basis of depression. Support your argument using empirical evidence'.
Critically discuss the biological basis of depression. Support
your argument using empirical evidence.
Psychology as a field has many different approaches within it that are used as a basis to
explain behaviours and abnormalities within people, the used approaches are aimed to provide a
scientific methodology to forming and testing theories via experimentation. One of the more
scientific of these approaches is the biological approach as it’s directly from scientific methodology
of experimentation collecting qualitative data. With regards to psychology, it is centred on any
potential biological factors that can have an effect on one’s psychology such as genetics or brain
activity like neurotransmitter levels or the amount of grey matter present. When applying this
approach to mental disorders the causation of the disorders as well as the present symptoms are
investigated, one disorder that has been subject to view via the biological approach is depression.
Depression under the DSM5 is defined as a mood disorder involves a patient suffering with
persistent sadness and hopelessness, it also involves a lack of interest for things that a sufferer once
enjoyed. The condition can become quite severe if prolonged without intervention, and in recent
years there has been rise in diagnosis (according to the Office of Nation Statistics) because of this
there has been more attention on the issue so much investigation has been done to explain it and
treat it.
The biological basis of the disorder looks at the makeup of an individual to come to the
causes, two key biological aspects for it those being a hereditary aspect and a neurological aspect.
These aspects have been found and supported by many studies over the years so solidify the
findings. These studies involve many methods that analyse the biological factors such as the levels of
neurotransmitters one has, the structure of someone’s brain and also the genetic links between
parents and children especially the investigation in twins. Twin studies offer up a great insight to
, PSYC2091 Biological Assessment
how genetic factors and potential environmental factors affect an individual. More specifically the
adopted twin studies hold a more compelling argument for the support of a biological basis as a set
of twins can both develop the investigated mental disorder, in this case depression, while being
brought up in different environments. From the studies researchers can conclude that genetics are
the most influence where or not a disorder’s development with occur and not the environment. One
of these studies was the ‘Swedish National Twin Study’, which was a meta-analysis conducted by
Kendler et al (2006) looking at over 40,000 twins. From the research the conclusion that depression
was moderately inheritable was made thus support that there is potential genetic cause to
depression. So, from research like this it can be suggested that there is a genetic link with the
development for depression as despite the difference in environment the children still develop the
disorder. In addition to this even when both twins are together, they still show higher chances of
developing the disorder if a parent is/has been a sufferer of the condition. Similar studies looking
into genetic causes have been done that looked at the relationship between mothers and daughters
with regards to the risk of developing depression. Further research looking at relation between
parent suffers and their children was done by Colich et al (2017), findings here were able to
determine that being a child of a depressed mother was a strong predictor in whether or not the
child will also grow up to develop the disorder thus supporting that depression has a biological basis
as genetics play a significant role in whether or not one will suffer with depression.
The other potential factor that has been investigated for the biological basis is the
neurological activity that takes place within one’s brain. This is in regard to the levels of
neurotransmitters that are presence during synaptic transmission and what stays in the synaptic gap
and is not absorbed back in by cells, like serotonin. A paper written by Cowen and Browning (2015)
illustrates what the specific neurotransmitter, serotonin, has to do with depression by covering the
“serotonin hypothesis”. This essentially is the idea that the levels of serotonin affect if one develops
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